On Jun. 23, 2025, Texas A&M research shows wearable health tech can detect infections like COVID-19 and flu within hours — enabling faster isolation, treatment and prevention.

Recent studies have demonstrated that smartwatches’ health apps and sensors provide enough information to accurately predict when a person has become infected with a disease like COVID-19 or the flu, even within as few as 12 hours after infection. 

In a study published this in PNAS Nexus, researchers at Texas A&M University and Stanford University used a computational model to estimate how smartwatch-based detection could help control the spread of pandemics such as COVID-19 and pandemic influenza. 

Their findings suggest that smartwatch detection could lower pandemic transmission risk by nearly 50% by providing early warnings to people with potential infections, prompting them to isolate and greatly lowering their chances of spreading disease.  

Using smartwatches, then, could make the problem of disease transmission more personal and encourage more people to take practices like isolating and getting tested more seriously, increasing the overall efficacy of existing tools.