for the whole family :) COVID Symptom Tracker app to help researchers gather data

[serendipitous journey]

I've set this up for us, including the kids, and thought others might be interested.  It is one COVID-relevant and helpful thing that nearly everybody can do.

COVID Symptom Tracker: available as Apple App or on Google Play. 

The short blurb: If enough Americans share daily how they feel, even if they're well, this app can provide the healthcare system with critically valuable information.This app-based study is a way to find out where the COVID hot spots are, new symptoms to look out for, and might be used as a planning tool to target quarantines, send ventilators and provide real-time data to plan for future outbreaks.

The longer blurb: 

The COVID symptom tracker was created by doctors and scientists at Massachusetts General Hospital, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, King's College London and Stanford University School of Medicine, working codeveloped with ZOE – a health science company.

The app will be used to study the symptoms of COVID-19 and track the spread of this virus. This research is led by:

• Prof. Tim Spector, Professor of Genetic Epidemiology at King’s College London and Director of TwinsUK;
• Prof. Andrew Chan, Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Chief of the Clinical and Translational Epidemiology Unit, CTEU Massachusetts General Hospital
• Prof. Christopher Gardner, Rehnborg Farquhar Professor of Medicine at Stanford University Prevention Research Center. ‍‍

This app was built in the US to support the Nurses’ Health Study. This is one of the largest and longest-running scientific studies in the world with 280,000 participants stretching back to 1976. Many participants in the Nurses' Health Study are still active healthcare workers who are treating people with COVID across the country and risking their own health to help us. The app is now available to anyone in the US or UK who wants to help.

In response to recommendations by Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C), the app also includes questions for cancer patients and survivors, such as if they are living with cancer, what type of cancer and what treatment they are receiving. The medical community knows that individuals with cancer and those receiving anti-cancer therapy are at increased risk for getting COVID-19. “There is too much we don’t know about COVID-19 in the cancer community,” stated Stand Up To Cancer CEO Sung Poblete, PhD, RN. “This data will be invaluable to assess how best to support this high-risk community, and for cancer patients and survivors to contribute to combatting this pandemic.”

Prof. Spector created and runs TwinsUK, which is a scientific study of 15,000 identical and non-identical twins that has been running for nearly three decades. As well as using the app to study symptoms in the general population, TwinsUK is using it to understand how symptoms develop with participating twins. Their research is funded by the Wellcome Trust and the National Institute for Health Research.