In the history of war, the health of military personnel is given priority to ensure that they can perform their mission at an optimal level. A minor injury will not only slow down a member personally but cause the unit's effectiveness to decrease. To help detect disease earlier, the United States Department of Defense (DOD) developed the Rapid Assessment of Threat Exposure (RATE) project.
RATE is a wearable device that can detect various types of diseases early through biometric readings of the wearer's body. Algorithms read pulse reading data, temperature and various other inputs to predict the user's health level. A project developed since August 2020 to successfully detect Covid-19 earlier.
It has now been given an additional $10 million in funding to collect more data and provide 4500 wearable devices to Air Force (USAF) personnel. The RATE wearable device successfully detects infectious diseases such as Covid-19 up to 2.3 days earlier. RATE's long-term plan is that it can be used on a variety of wearable devices but in the testing phase Garmin smartwatches and smart rings are being used.
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