APTIMA INC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: N231-057

Description

Military training often occurs in high temperature environments, with Warfighters having to bear heavy loads over lengthy time periods, and while wearing extensive gear (e.g., full uniforms, body armor, helmets, rucksacks) that can impose significant heat strain. Although the Heat Illness Prevention System (HIPS) has been successful with early detection of and intervention for excessive heat strain in some training settings, HIPS has limited scalability and needs logistical advancements to support an enterprise-wide deployment. In response to this need, Aptima and its partners will develop the Measures Integration Toolkit for Heat Risk Intervention Logic (MITHRIL), a wearable heat strain assessment system running on a modern, scalable, and secure computing platform that can proactively alert individuals and their teammates to high-risk situations. MITHRIL will prevent heat strain and heat illness incidents more frequently than currently possible, thus facilitating early intervention to prevent life-threatening emergencies. In circumstances that cannot be prevented or that rapidly escalate to an emergency status, MITHRIL would help to immediately identify the situation and the location of the impacted individual, while also supplying a record of physiological data leading up to the incident.