Long Covid 'Healthathon'

[Eleanor]

Just saw this via a post on Mastodon.

https://www.hhs.gov/blog/2024/03/26...ng-covid-healthathon-launches-25k-prizes.html

"Rigorous science takes time, yet people with Long COVID need help today. To address that need, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health (OASH) launched the Long COVID Healthathon , an innovation sprint with $25,000 in cash prizes for the public to develop digital solutions to support those living with Long COVID today. Members of the public are invited to join the healthathon to help provide real-world solutions."

Some of the ideas look promising, if they could get funding... https://longcovid.crowdicity.com/category/browse

 

[Eleanor]

(Wasn't sure which section to post this in, mods feel free to move!)

 

[Yann04]

“How might we design and implement innovative solutions to improve the lives of those with Long COVID today?”

Removing Wallitt and similar from having leading roles into LC research at the NIH would be a good start.

 

[Kitty]

Yep! But I do wish someone would look at how to design apps to leverage the technology in consumer wearables specifically for Long Covid and ME. I think these could potentially pick up some of the changes in movement (and the ability to control it) that occur in both the rapid fatiguability during activity, and in the PEM that sometimes follows it.

If they can analyse my swimming stroke in detail, I don't see why they couldn't pick up me flinging my arms out to do things instead of moving them smoothly, and rolling much more from side to side when I walk.

It's possible they could eventually warn people that they're tiring and ought to stop asap.

 

[Eleanor]

My Fitbit thought I'd been for a swim when I'd been sitting on the floor folding laundry! Definitely room for something more sensitive. I wonder if a device could pick up changes in voice too. Or typing patterns!

 

[Trish]

My Fitbit thought I'd been for a swim when I'd been sitting on the floor folding laundry! Definitely room for something more sensitive.

It may be similar in terms of exertion. I find folding laundry exhausting - all that arm movement, sometimes lifting items with some weight above shoulder height etc. When possible I get my cleaner to do it.

 

[Kitty]

My Fitbit thought I'd been for a swim when I'd been sitting on the floor folding laundry!

Yes, my Fitbit wasn't ideal for swimming, it couldn't reliably tell the difference between backstroke and freestyle! But I've had two others since (the most recent is Apple Watch, but I also had a very cheap device before that) which were much more accurate.

Some devices are better at some things than others, and that would need to be recognised in app design. The only thing my Apple Watch got wrong is climbing stairs, something I'm incapable of doing. I suspect it only measured something like elevation, not the specific movement involved, so a journey in a lift would be recorded as a walk*. My Fitbit wasn't much use on arm movements, but I don't remember it claiming I'd walked up four flights of stairs.


* It's possible this has been fixed now—I stopped it recording that type of activity several years ago, as I was worried about capturing evidence that seemed to contradict my claims for disability allowance.

 

[Sean]

One of my worst crashes was from some gentle swimming. And by gentle I mean barely at all, I was mostly floating down a river being carried by the flow.

But the next day... Oh boy.