Q&A: How smart devices test blood oxygen levels to prevent COVID-19 spread

Ian Bolland spoke to the team at Luminati Networks which is participating in a taskforce called Sprint COVID-19, which was launched to prevent virus spread by testing blood oxygen levels through smart devices.  

Tell us what Luminati Networks can offer at this time?

The initiative that Luminati is involved is part of Sprint COVID-19’s continued work against the virus and was designed to build an AI-powered COVID-19 assessment tool. This is a machine-learning algorithm that helps track the spread of the disease by analysing user input for mild and asymptomatic cases.

What technological aspect in particular from Luminati is key to making an effective contribution to this project?

As a key player in the online data collection domain, Luminati has a unique opportunity to observe trends in real-time (almost live) as they evolve and happen around the world. When it realised that the outbreak was becoming a pandemic, naturally it wanted to help in any way which it could.

Luminati immediately offered all COVID-19 researchers worldwide the opportunity to use its data collection automation (DCA) solution to accelerate their research. With a pandemic of this size, Luminati knew it needed to equip the people fighting it with the most up to date intelligence and information possible. As a company that usually works with large-scale organisations in the e-commerce and travel sector, Luminati is used to collecting massive amounts of publicly available data in short time frames.

Sprint COVID-19 approached Luminati once its initiative became public. The project Luminati participated in was aimed at using smart devices to help enable early COVID-19 detection and prevent mass infection. Luminati quickly assessed the situation and knew it could provide all the data needed for this specific project in a very short time.

Luminati knew time was the utmost essence in this sprint to conquer COVID-19 so quickly used data collection automation to sift through the mass amount of publicly available online data to identify all suitable smart devices.

What kind of technology allows you to monitor the symptoms of its users?

Sprint COVID-19 found that many commonly owned smartphones or smartwatch devices have a built-in sensor, known as a SpO2 sensor, that can enable testing your own blood oxygen levels independently and easily which could be a key first step in identifying the virus early. Based on those results, the team aims to promote a heuristic test that can be carried out on smartphones and smartwatches to identify asymptomatic, pre-symptomatic, and mild cases which would otherwise go undetected. The team turned to Luminati to identify which of the possible 8,000 different device models were able to deploy this test.

Would users have to install or buy an add-on to ensure they can ‘opt in’?

The sensor is already present on a wide range of smart devices and no additional app or software is needed. The most important aspect is finding a compatible device, and this is where Luminati was able to assist. Luminati quickly found that smart devices carrying the SpO2 sensor included many older smartphone models. In just under 24 hours, it found out that over 110 smartphone models and 165 models of smartwatches and smart bands have this sensor to test blood oxygen levels.

Commonly these devices allow users to access the data in the same way that they can track other health aspects, such as heart rate.

Given this is a new virus, how will you know the approach works?

Sprint COVID-19 approached Luminati based on research coming out of China and Italy – according to that research 30%-50% of their COVID-19 infected population suffered from silent hypoxia. This means having a low level of oxygen in blood, without any obvious shortness of breath or other visible symptoms, which translates to a higher chance of them infecting other people without even knowing it.

The approach taken by Sprint COVID-19 and Luminati was for the public to be able to test their blood oxygen levels and if they are low, then to seek further medical advice while isolating themselves from other people – this is a first indication.