Social Wearables - Crowdsourcing eHealth Technology [Funder: Carleton University COVID-19 Rapid Research Response Grants]

Wearables are now commonplace as monitoring devices for personal health information. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has shown that we must move from a personal to a social approach to health. This social approach must be supported by adequate technology, beyond what is currently available. We believe wearable technology will play a key role in preventing future pandemics by crowdsourcing health information (likely through connections to our phones), thereby creating networks of contact that help in identifying and preventing contagion, and correlating personal health information to identify suspected infections, etc. For this to be realized, we must address privacy concerns at a fundamental level of wearable hardware and software, and design trusted wearable devices with the required level of computational power and communication, whilst maintaining lasting battery life. This project will research the technologies that support social wearables towards a social response to the COVID-19 pandemic.