Welcome to the COVID Collab Research Study
This is a citizen science research project calling for the donation of data from you to help study the physical and mental health effects of Covid-19.
To do this we need data only you can provide.
Download the Mass Science App to find out how to get involved.
Own a Fitbit? We are especially interested in you joining our study.
COVID Collab is a research study led out of the NIHR Maudsley BRC , King’s College London and UCLH BRC, University College London investigating the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak - both the disease itself and the impact measures to control it are having on our lives. A key feature of this study is the use of a wearable data to investigate changes in measurements such as heart rate during infection with coronavirus. Current recruitment into the study is over 20,000 individuals.
If wearable data, from e.g. Fitbit, can be used as a digital test to identify COVID-19 cases.
How contagious the virus is and how different social distancing measures affect the transmission rate.
Many people are already feeling a large psychological impact from the outbreak and the measures being required to contain it. We would like to understand to what extent it is affecting people's mood and causing stress.
Our knowledge of Covid-19 symptoms and severity are presently limited. Your data will help us test our theories and about what symptoms are important. Are there any early predictors of infection and how reliable are these?
Data for the COVID Collab study will use the Mass Science app developed here at King's College London for data collection.
Download our Mass Science app and spend a small amount of time reporting your current symptoms, how you are feeling, and let us know if you are diagnosed.
Optionally, you can also fill in questionnaires every two weeks which will give us a much more in-depth understanding of your mood.
You may also provide us with location data; how much you are able to move around and how much time you are spending at home may be important to understanding any impact on mental health. Your location data is very sensitive - only derived values, such as how much time is spent outside, linked to an anonymous ID will be available to researchers.
If you have a Fitbit device then we’d like you to wear it and provide us with a feed of your heart rate, activity step count and sleep. This may help us understand symptomatology and provide early warning signs, but is not a requirement for taking part!
Registration guide...
Sign up to the study before you are ill or diagnosed with Covid-19. Signing up to our study before any sign of illness will give us the most useful data. In this way we are able to collect data and while you provide context with your questionnaire answers. This information labelling of the data is very important to our analysis. You can also help by publicising this study if you know someone who might be interested in participating.
Were you ill or diagnosed in the past? This is still useful! If you have a Fitbit and were previously ill, when you sign up you can still donate the data from that previous time! Our data scientists are still able to study this data.
“I’m interested in how we can use digital signals from wearable devices and smartphones to track respiratory disease (such as Covid-19) in the population. We are keen to test the viability of identifying signals of respiratory illness and the pre-symptomatic stages of illness. Your heart and lungs are part of the machinery responsible for getting oxygen around your body and eliminating CO2, an activity such as taking a walk, will result in your lungs and heart having to work at your healthy baseline level; however, when you have a respiratory infection your lungs don’t work as well, and consequently, for the same level of activity, your heart will have to work harder. By having a record of your baseline heart rates for given activity levels when healthy, and your heart rates for the equivalent activity levels when ill, we are looking for a difference in the activity-to-heart rate ratios. Fortunately, this data is exactly what a wearable device like Fitbit provides. By studying this data from a large number of people, we aim to identify differences that are indicative of, or forcast illness. Once widespread testing for Covid-19 comes into place, we will be attempting to differentiate the signal of Covid-19 from other respiratory infections like colds and flu.” 
“Both the Covid-19 outbreak itself and the social measures required to contain the spread are unprecedented in our lives. I’m interested in what impact it is having on our psychological well-being, what we can do to limit any negative impacts and who might be most at risk of them. For example, we know that regular exercise and being in nature can reduce stress, anxiety, and depression. Now that there are limits on our freedom to go outside, is the permission to exercise once per day afforded to people in some countries used, useful, adequate or inessential? How long are people able to socially isolate before any ill effects emerge?”
