How Whoop is utilizing data for coronavirus research

Will Ahmed, Whoop CEO, spoke with Yahoo Finance about how Whoop is utilizing data in the age of coronavirus.

Video Transcript

MYLES UDLAND: We are joined now by the CEO of Whoop, Will Ahmed, to talk a little bit about where fitness trackers fit into a point in our lives when we're not really doing any fitness, but obviously, our bodies are still giving off a bunch of data about how we're feeling.

So Will, just start with what you guys announced last week, which was basically tracking the respiratory rate of users, of Whoops wearers, I guess, and really what that could mean for someone who has indicated or believes or suspects that they're suffering from symptoms of COVID-19.

WILL AHMED: Well, look, thanks for having me, guys. You know, at Whoop, we build technology across hardware and software and analytics that's designed to continuously understand the human body. So I'm wearing a sensor on my wrist. This is the Whoop Strap 3.0 that's collecting everything about my body across five different metrics 100 times per second. All of it sends data to your phone, phone to the cloud, and then, you know, you can digest all of that information on the app I just showed you.

And recently, we've seen a number of Whoop members have COVID-19. So we added COVID-19 tracking within the Whoop app, and you can toggle that on if you've tested positive for COVID-19. And we've seen a large number of Whoop members do that. And so we've begun collecting a de-identified aggregate data set on COVID-19 data and Whoop data. And essentially, we want to figure out what does COVID-19 look like before, during, and after someone is having symptoms, with the goal ultimately being doing everything we can to help people identify that they may be sick before they even feel sick.

MYLES UDLAND: Yeah, so let's talk through, I guess, what data you have so far-- what it's showing. I mean, are we seeing elevated heart rates from those users? I guess you would suspect that if someone has a fever, their body is going to be in overdrive. And I mentioned, again, that update that came to the app, I think it was about a week ago today, now shows your respiratory rate overnight. For me, it's, like, 14 or 15-- I don't know what it is for most Whoop users, but how much variability would someone with COVID expect to see in that sort of rate overnight?

WILL AHMED: Yeah. So what we've seen with people who have COVID-19 are specific things and then non-specific things. So what do I mean by that? Non-specific would be, like, an elevated resting heart rate or a decreased heart rate variability-- or on Whoop, even getting a red recovery score. That's the readiness score that we give you every day. That's non-specific in the sense that if you have the flu, if you have a cold, if you have COVID-19, if you have a general virus, right, you're going to see all of those things generally happen in your Whoop data.

What we're seeing that appears to be specific-- specific to COVID-19-- is an elevated respiratory rate. So in the individual cases that we've looked at, two to three days before someone actually feels symptoms for COVID-19, they have this unusually elevated respiratory rate. And we added this to the app because, previously, it was something we were collecting in the background. We've had third party validation showing that we measure it super accurately. But it's actually a pretty boring statistic.

Like, if you go back and you look at my respiratory rate over the last six months, it's been at 13 probably 99% of days. Maybe it went to 14 once. You mentioned your respiratory rate is 14. What does that mean? It means you're having 14 breaths per minute while you're sleeping. OK? Now, if we look at that baseline and all of a sudden you jump from 14 to 16 or 17 or 18, which is what we're seeing with people that have COVID-19, it may be a sign that something's going on in your body.

MELODY HAHM: Hey, Will. Just thinking about the asymptomatic patients and also, of course, this is self-reported data, right? So I don't-- if I'm understanding correctly, people do not actually to show their test results that they tested positive. Are you afraid of this sort of WebMD effect where people are self-diagnosing? And then there's also kind of the rhetoric from the medical system being like, stay home-- even if you do feel like you have some of those symptoms, you should not be crowding out people who, perhaps, are more vulnerable than you.

WILL AHMED: Well, I think right now, you know, it's everyone's responsibility to try to understand this virus as much as possible. Like, humanity at large is in a fight against this virus. And so we view our role at Whoop is to try to educate and do as much research as possible. Now, we've partnered with CQU and the Cleveland Clinic, who are two of the leading research institutions around this, and they're going to go very deep on the de-identified aggregate data that I just described.

We've also since added symptom tracking within the app. So if you report COVID-19, there's, like, a 20-question questionnaire that you fill out around your symptoms, around testing positive, around the date of that first symptoms. So it's-- you, know it's designed to be, really, I think as comprehensive as we can be-- again, with the goal of providing as much feedback to the research community and to our Whoop members.

I mean, a lot of our Whoop community I think feels some relief in being able to look at this respiratory rate number every day. Now, you ask a good question-- where do we go from here, right? If you do see a super elevated respiratory rate, what does that mean? And we're not making any claims around that, but we've seen in individual cases that elevated respiratory rate goes along with COVID-19.

MYLES UDLAND: All right. Will Ahmed is a CEO of Whoop. Thanks for joining the program. We'll talk to you soon.