The project lead says that future troops may be deployed with watches or chest straps that could predict when they will get sick and how long it would take to recover. When U.S. Service members get ill at the last minute, it could cause serious consequences in regards to executing critical duties. To get ahead of the issues, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), leading health technology company Royal Phillips and the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), launched a project to develop a technology that could predict whether a service member is getting sick 48 hours in advance. The project was launched 18 months ago and announced its completion on Oct 22. "By coupling large-scale data, with our experience in AI and remote patient monitoring with DTRA's drive for innovation, we were able to develop a highly predictive early-warning algorithm based on non-invasively collected biomarkers," Joe Frassica, chief medical officer and head of research for Philips North America, said in the release. Using 165 distinct biomarkers across 41,000 cases, the Phillips team created the Rapid Analysis of Threat Exposure (RATE) algorithm which is the "first large-scale empirical exploration of prediction of pre-symptomatic infection in humans."