MIT Turns to Commercial Wearables and a Clever Algorithm to Save Military Trainees from Heatstroke

A team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)'s Lincoln Laboratory have developed a wearable system designed to monitor your body temperature — and to warn you, via a smartwatch, if you're at risk of heatstroke.

"Heat injury is a preventable injury if you know how to look for it," explains MIT's James Balcius, who led the program and who joined MIT after 30 years of military service. "The services have these injuries in the hundreds each year, and annually a number of service members have died from this. Trainers and medics could benefit from tools that provide a warning of an impending heat casualty. That's why we're developing this technology."

The technology in question, which is initially targeted at military trainees, takes the form of two commercial off-the-shelf wearables: An armband heart-rate sensor and a Bluetooth-enabled smartwatch. Using data from the armband, the smartwatch estimates the wearer's core body temperature — and provides simple feedback, in the form of stop, warning, or all-OK signs, accordingly.

The algorithm, which turns heart rate into estimated core body temperature isn't new: It was originally developed by the US government in 2013, and has seen deployment in a range of commercial products — but none as compact as a smartwatch, the MIT team claims.

The system proved its worth during field testing, with 170 prototypes sent to the US Marine Corps Training and Education Command — though the program suffered a last-minute hitch when updates to the smartwatch's operating system and the discontinuation of the original arm band sensor in favor of a dual-channel model required changes to the software.

Full details of the program have not been published for public consumption, but more information is available on the MIT website.