Working to improve force readiness with smart infectious disease management
- March 17 2025
- Duration 2: 1
Smart infectious disease management has the potential to help the U.S. military impact force readiness. Philips is collaborating with U.S. government researchers to develop an AI-based early warning system that aims to identify infection early to enable quarantine and behavior change in order to avoid further spread
At-a-glance:
- [0:04] – RATE algorithm
- [0:48] – Collaboration with Dept. of Defense
- [1:16] – Potential impact of RATE
The U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) and Philips have collaborated to develop an artificial intelligence-based early warning system for infectious disease. Using wearable technologies such as watches and rings that can capture vital sign and biomarker information, and applying this data to the Rapid Analysis of Threat Exposure (RATE) algorithm, the goal is to enable faster diagnosis and treatment of infection and contain spread of disease.
Exposure to infectious agents causes subtle changes in people’s physiology before they experience symptoms. Identifying these changes early in the infection is critical to containing the spread, as asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic individuals don’t yet show signs of infection and can unwittingly spread the disease to others. An early warning solution could potentially alert people of their possible infection and enable them to quarantine and change their behaviors sooner to avoid infecting others.
If RATE is successful, this will have an enormous impact on force readiness, infectious disease management, and most importantly, this will save lives.
Dr. Christian Whitchurch
Defense Innovation Unit, Director of Human Systems
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Disclaimer
Results are specific to the institution where they were obtained and may not reflect the results achievable at other institutions. Results in other cases may vary.