Use of IoT wearables for health care in he conditions of the Covid-19 pandemic

Wearables are small electronic devices that are worn on or near the body and communicate with the outside world using communication technologies. Even though it is a relatively new technology, it is spreading very fast. This work addresses the issue of the potential use of wearable devices in the context of the global pandemic Covid-19. The aim is to map current trends and evaluate the potential of their use, especially in terms of an early detection and identification of signs of infection. During the ongoing pandemic, there has been an agreement among experts on the definition of physiological characteristics, the changes of which specifically correspond to different stages of the infection. Based on the analysis of the selected studies, these findings were used to select the physiological metrics that can be monitored with commonly used consumer wearables. For the purposes of a potential early diagnosis, the following physiological metrics were used due to their availability and significance power: heart rate variability (HRV), heart rate (HR), resting heart rate (RHR) and oxygen saturation (SpO2). These were used as the key metrics measured by the selected wearables, which were subjected to a comparative analysis based on selected criteria, for which multicriteria decision-making methods were applied. The Saaty method was used to evaluate the weights of individual criteria, and based on the TOPSIS method, the device that appears to be the most suitable for a potential early detection of Covid-19 has been determined.