Imagine having a little device on your wrist feeding your body’s signals back to a robot that’s been trained especially to tell you whether you’ve been infected by a disease.
It sounds like an Orwellian-like reach for a desperate society facing a hidden enemy like the cordyceps in The Last of Us.
But this type of technology is more fact than fiction for some Australian scientists, who have revealed they’re testing the possibility of such a solution with hardware that you can buy right now.
Researchers at the University of South Australia will use consumer-grade technology like smart watches to see if they can detect the earliest signs of infection by measuring subtle changes in things like:
- sleep
- skin temperature
- breathing
- heart rate
They’re hoping that by measuring these vital signs, they’ll be able to teach an artificial intelligence algorithm to pinpoint when someone is getting sick.
They’ll measure the most intimate details of those who sign up to the study, probing the highly private parts of someone’s life in the name of research. But they’ll stop short of asking questions about things like sex.
It represents another privacy trade-off in a world where technology is becoming more and more intrusive. But defence scientists say it could have big benefits, in both peacetime and wartime (more on that in a second).
One potential benefit: The researchers hope it could lead to a monitoring system that could slow or stop the next pandemic.
Axel Bender, who leads a team of scientists focused on innovation at the Australian government’s Defence Science and Technology Group, said it could even prevent another lockdown.
He said health authorities would be able to respond to a pandemic threat more quickly, quarantining people while infection rates were still low.
“You would not need to lock down anymore because you would just break infection pathways so early,” Dr Bender said.
What was that about wartime? Why is the defence force interested in this?
The research, which is an Australian first, is part of a growing body of work leveraging the use of the human body as a sensor to detect biological or chemical threats. It is formally known in the Australian defence community as the Human Integrated Sensor System.
The project is being funded by the Defence Science and Technology Group, which is an arm of Australia’s Department of Defence.
It hopes the research will also help soldiers on the battlefield and in disaster zones facing biological warfare threats.
Biological warfare refers to pathogens like viruses, bacteria and fungi being used against soldiers and spread through infection.
Dr Bender said this type of technology would enable the military to monitor soldiers to see if they’ve possibly been infected by a pathogen.
Under the plan, sick soldiers wearing devices could be isolated from their units sooner and then treated, preventing the spread of infection.
“We know when it comes to …. chemical or biological warfare agents … not everyone abides by conventions that prohibit those weapons,” Dr Bender said.
The promise of the technology has also prompted some scientists, including Dr Bender, to personally call for Australia to invest in this type of research as part of a national effort.
So how is this going to work?
There’s a fair bit of research required first.
Through millions of years of evolution, the human body has become sensitive to things that cause it stress, and generally reacts to them immediately.
The plan from scientists is to use the body as an alarm to detect diseases or biological threats, including chemical warfare.
They’ll do that by giving 100 study participants three devices — an Oura ring which measures sleep, a Garmin smartwatch which can track activity, and an EmbracePlus smartwatch which collects health data.
Those devices will measure a participant’s vital signs before and after they receive a COVID or flu vaccine, which will challenge their immune system in a similar way to contracting an infection.
