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Patients with COVID-19 who were remotely monitored at home using a text-message-based program — known as COVID Watch — did not experience better outcomes if they used a pulse oximeter, according to research findings published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Supported in part by PCORI funding, the study — led by Mucio Delgado, MD, MS, at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine — compared patients who received standard care as part of the COVID Watch program to patients in the same program who were also given a pulse oximeter to monitor their oxygen levels. Researchers found that adding the pulse oximeter did not save more lives or keep more people out of the hospital.