Cell Phone Activity and Trauma Patient Volume in New England Through the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Research Consortium of New England Centers for Trauma Study

We sought to understand whether cell phone activity in commercial spaces as a marker for population mobility would be associated with trauma admission (TA) volumes, taking advantage of cell phone data made available during the COVID-19 pandemic and large swings in population activity.

Trauma registry data from 6 Level I trauma centers (TCs) in New England were used to identify the number of daily TAs from January 20, 2020, to July 31, 2021. The device exposure index (DEX) is a standardized measure of daily cell phone interactions with other cell phones within a county. Spearman's rank correlation was calculated for the first wave of COVID-19 from March 2020 to May 2020 and for the entire study period. Center-specific Poisson models were created to control for seasonality.

During the study period, daily mean TA was 42.8 (SD 10.7) and daily mean DEX was 60.6 (SD 26.8) overlapping device visits to venues per day. The daily DEX was moderately correlated with TA from March to May 2020 for 5 centers serving unique catchment areas, with Spearman's rho ranging from 0.22 to 0.47 (p < 0.05). The sixth center where the catchment area overlaps with those of multiple Level I centers had much lower correlation ( r = 0.06; p = 0.59). After controlling for seasonality, DEX vs TA relationships remained significant among the 6 centers.

County-level daily DEX scores correlated significantly with TC-specific numbers of daily TA at 5 of 6 TCs during the first 3 months of the study period. Additional research is needed; however, the use of cell phone activity and interactions can be a valuable adjunct for trauma system planning.