Evolution of Physiological Status Monitoring for Ambulatory Military Applications

This chapter describes real-time physiological status monitoring, which provides key medical situational awareness of at-risk individuals. The information obtained enables military leaders to make better decisions with regard to mission management. These monitoring systems do not replace medical or leadership decision-making, but rather they provide objective information on which leadership can base their decisions to mitigate the risk of injuries and enhance performance. Commercial systems and research tools must be modified to meet the requirements of operational military personnel. These monitoring systems integrate wearable sensors, smart algorithms, computer and mobile user interfaces, and communications equipment to allow data-driven decisions to be made by appropriate personnel. This often requires data to be aggregated and sent from the wearer of the system to a decision-maker some distance away. This chapter describes the research and development efforts to meet the needs of military operational units.