Smartwatches taught to detect infectious diseases in people at early stages

The US Department of Defense’s Defense Innovation Unit, also known as DIU, has partnered with Philips to develop a technology to detect diseases and infections. Smartwatches with unique capabilities have been developed and tested for several years, and the technology has proven to be a good fit during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Now, the Ministry of Defense is seeking to expand the use of the technology to detect even more infectious diseases in the military. The US is convinced that the use of smartwatches should have a positive impact on the overall health of American soldiers. Early detection of an infection will allow starting treatment for a disease in advance.

«The Department of Defense invests heavily in maintaining the combat readiness of the military to carry out critical missions. However, the risk of infectious diseases such as COVID-19 has long been an unpredictable variable. With theRATE program, the Department of Defense can use commercial devices to non-invasively monitor a service member’s health and provide early warning of potential infection before it spreads,» said Jeff Schneider, RATE program manager.

The smartwatches from the Ministry of Defense and Philips use an artificial intelligence algorithm that was trained based on data from hospital data on controlled COVID-19 cases. The RATE algorithm made it possible to detect infectious diseases at an early stage 48 hours before the onset of symptoms.

As a reminder, the U.S. Army is also putting into operation a new tactical feedback tool that will track the health of entire military units. The Measuring and Advancing Soldier Tactical Readiness and Effectiveness (MASTR-E) fitness bracelet is synchronized with data collected over years of analysis and research on past army productivity programs.

It is possible that both technologies will eventually be combined into one device. After all, the use of both a smartwatch and a fitness bracelet on the battlefield is questionable.