DOD Advances Program Using Wearables for Early Disease Detection

The Defense Department is increasing its investment in wearable technology for disease detection after seeing success in prototypes that caught asymptomatic Covid-19 among service members.

Congress gave an extra $10 million to help the DOD expand the Rapid Assessment of Threat Exposure (RATE) project to new contractors after its prototype detected Covid up to 48 hours before symptoms appeared through biometric data collected on wearable devices. The algorithm also predicted infections up to six days earlier, including asymptomatic cases.

The RATE project was developed by Philips, the Defense Innovation Unit, and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). It uses a ...