WASHINGTON \u2014 The U.S. Defense Department is expanding a research study that detects potential COVID-19 infections through wearable devices to \u201cseveral thousand participants,\u201d officials announced Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The project, from the Defense Innovation Unit, Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) and Philips Healthcare uses artificial intelligence to analyze biometric data to detect potential COVID-19 infections in asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic carriers and slow the spread of the virus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The early-warning system prototype is part of the DoD\u2019s Rapid Analysis of Threat Exposure (RATE) technology and has been used for COVID-19 detection for a dozen different cohorts of military and non-military personnel in clinic trials, according to a press release. The system can detect early, \u201csub-clinical\u201d symptoms up to 48 hours before overt symptoms appear, Lt. Col. Jeff \u201cMach\u201d Schneider, a DIU program manager told C4ISRNET.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe immediate priority was to work with cohorts that were either in some kind of front line capacity,\u201d such as health care workers, \u201cor that were more severely impacted from a readiness standpoint,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The technology is in use by about 700 workers in the U.S. Navy and Office of the Secretary of Defense, Schneider said. He added that the study will expand to about 5,000 new users across different services, commands and the United States Military Academy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAs we continue to collect data and refine the algorithm, priority will continue to be provided to those first responders and those that have had to adopt new operational tempo to support their duty obligations,\u201d Schneider said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The RATE program uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to analyze a person\u2019s biometric data and detect small changes in a person before they experience any symptoms. The system can then alert a user they may be infected so they can quarantine or change their behavior to prevent further spreading the disease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cRATE would allow us to non-invasively monitor a service member\u2019s health and provide early alerts to potential infection that will help us to ensure troop readiness, better support their health and protect against the threat of further spread of the disease,\u201d said Edward Argenta, science and technology manager at DTRA, said in a statement. \u201cUnlike other more narrow approaches, this solution is designed to recognize a wide variety of infections and can help identify future novel threats.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The RATE program\u2019s COVID-19 detection application deployed to military units in mid-June, while Dr. Joseph Frassica, Philips’ head of research in the Americas, added that the algorithm is being further refined to better project COVID-19 infections. The RATE-COVID app is designed to work with all wearables and the team is looking to deploy to bring-your-own devices \u201cin the future,” the release said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
RATE originally started years ago to slow the spread of general infections such as the flu, Frassica told C4ISRNET in an interview. In March, the partnership pivoted to the coronavirus pandemic, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWith Covid it became even more critical to find those people who are pre-symptomatic to get them out of the population before they have a high enough viral load to start to spread the disease,\u201d Frassica said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The RATE program uses large-scale machine learning to analyze data across 165 biomarkers from a data set owned by Philips that contains 41,000 cases of hospital-acquired infections. Biomarker data is then process and analyzed in the cloud, generates an hourly RATE score that service members can then access through a secure website. it looks at several biometric markers such as temperature and blood pressure. The press release added that the risk score also works for \u201cmultiple general types of infection,” with Philips scientists also working to generate a tool that can detect the \u201cnext new unknown infectious agent.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“By combining commercial technology, a rich data source and simple-to-use wearables, we are effectively providing a check-engine light on the military service member and getting that alert before they\u2019re broken down with a disease. In military speak, we\u2019re targeting left-of-cough awareness,\u201d said Christian Whitchurch, DIU human systems portfolio director, in a statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Schneider said that that project cost about $7 million in total, including funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act. Texas A&M\u2019s Engineering Experiment Station also worked on the project.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A new public-private partnership between the Defense Innovation Unit, Defense Threat Reduction Agency and Philips Healthcare is using artificial intelligence to identify COVID-19 infections before it’s too late.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":54774,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":6,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":{"8":{"categories":["management","daily-brief","newsletters","home"],"primary_category":"management"}}},"categories":[6,9,106,28,29,32],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3252],"class_list":["post-20689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","category-coronavirus","category-daily-brief","category-disaster","category-home","category-newsletters"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"VZCQAM3XGZA3XGYIN5JRDT2NDA","arc_canonical_url":"\/artificial-intelligence\/2020\/09\/22\/what-does-military-ai-need-to-detect-covid-data-from-wearables\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n