The ZOE COVID19 Study app has 4 million users and is now the world’s largest ongoing study into the virus.

Born of a disruption, having originally been designed to track gut, blood fat and blood sugar responses, the scientists behind the ZOE app rapidly pivoted in the face of COVID 19 to create an app that could track and slow the virus.

Since March 2020, the app has been critical for both scientific and public understanding the rapidly-changing virus, and has helped researchers discover that loss of smell and taste (anosmia) was a key predictive symptom for the virus, that early COVID-19 symptoms differ among age groups, that delirium is a key sign of COVID-19 in frail people and that urban areas and areas of deprivation were most affected by COVID-19.

Most recently, analysis of the data confirmed that vaccinated adults who contract COVID-19 infection experience a less severe illness than unvaccinated adults.

But what next? Claire Steves, a leading researcher on the ZOE app, will speak about how the app has radically shifted the way that researchers and the general public engage with global health crises by championing a community-based, citizen science approach, and what this means for studying disease, public health, government responses and patient experience into the future.

Speaker:

Claire Steves is a Clinical Senior Lecturer at King’s College London. She is also a Consultant Geriatrician at Guys and St Thomas’s NHS Foundation Trust as well as the Deputy Director (Clinical) for TwinsUK. She is leading the research team analysing your data on the ZOE COVID Study app.

The Festival of Disruptive Thinking showcases how disruptive thinking and innovative ideas can challenge the status quo and create better and bolder solutions in any sector, industry or discipline.

From stem cell TikTok to Nicolas Cage as a cybersecurity icon, from shipping container biotech labs to how to sue for climate action, from inclusive innovation and decolonising universities.

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