The BETTER Project: Development of a tool for the measurement of SARS-CoV-2 via Internet of Medical Things POCT

An Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) sensor system was proposed to detect Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). More specifically, a disposable sensor chip is realized by using a modified plastic optical fiber in order to excite the Surface Plasmon Resonance phenomenon useful to monitor the interaction between a specific molecularly imprinted polymer and the spike of SARS-CoV-2. The disposable chip is integrated into a portable and small-size system with a light source and a spectrometer to make the measurements at the patients' place, so a point of care test (POCT) connected to the Internet is realized. The acquired data are processed using a developed Windows-based application, and a dedicated software architecture was designed and implemented. This latter consists of a server in the cloud, a database, and a website. The proposed IoMT-POCT was developed and tested during the BETTER Project via approximately 1,000 positive and negative nasopharyngeal swabs in a universal transport medium. The results obtained through this sensor system were compared with those obtained using a gold-standard technique. A further potential of the proposed sensor system is the possibility of automatically performing a statistical analysis of the data provided, which is reported on the website.