Affordable and scalable remote monitoring platforms for disease characterisation and patient management in pandemics and for high-consequence infections

Characterising new and emerging life-threatening infectious diseases safely, and optimising clinical management strategies, are essential early activities in an epidemic/pandemic response. New technologies, wearable devices, cloud computing, and machine learning (ML), offer potentially transformative solutions. Vietnam has just experienced its first major COVID-19 wave. Cases are rising again. In wave one, a shortage of monitoring equipment caused serious delays in identifying and treating those with severe disease. Conventional remote-monitoring systems, needed for safe monitoring, cost upwards of £12,000 for a single patient which is unfeasible in Vietnam. Our objective therefore is to provide proof-of principle that a team within Vietnam can establish a low-cost remote monitoring platform during a pandemic that will aid clinical care and capture data for disease characterisation and research. Our multidisciplinary team in Ho Chi Minh city will develop the platform from a prototype implemented in 50 patients during wave one. The new platform will provide real-time continuous remote monitoring of oxygen saturations and heart rate in 150 patients. We will integrate device, clinical, and laboratory data, and develop a prototype ML-based clinical decision support system for COVID-19. The platform is designed to be rapidly deployable in other low-resource settings and for other emerging infectious diseases.