US Army enlists Polar wearables for early detection COVID-19 study

Elysian Labs, a science and research firm, chose to include Polar wearables in a study attempting to capture whether someone is infected with COVID-19 since that may occur before any symptoms are experienced. The US Army is funding the study and the first validation efforts will include 50 Army National Guard personnel with plans to expand this to 5,000 people in the coming months.

While Elysian is going to use Polar products to help capture data for this new COVID-19 study, it has actually been using Polar wearables for years in its warrior optimization and force readiness studies. Elysian Labs selected Polar for its record of accuracy, data stability, and reliability. Participants will be wearing the Polar Vantage V, check out our full review, and a Polar H10 chest-mounted heart rate monitor.

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Tom Fowler, president of Polar USA, stated the following:

Accuracy matters and Polar's commitment to hardcore science and research drive the technologies that make us the most trusted brand in the industry. Polar is utilized by the world's most advanced research institutes. In the last five years alone, Polar is cited in more than 5,000 scientific studies. Further, as Polar and Elysian know from our years of work with professional, amateur and tactical athletes, monitoring overnight rest and recovery can deliver incredible insights that make the difference between athletes' success or failure. We are pleased to bring our technologies and knowledge to bear on the CV-19 issue.

By measuring biometrics data daily, including heart rate, heart rate variability (HRV), autonomic nervous system and recovery, sleep, and more, adverse changes in key markers that are often associated with early onset of disease or other physical compromises, can be detected at an early stage. According to Polar, the Elysian study aims to validate the correlation between such adverse trending and asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic occurrence of COVID-19.

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Over the years we have seen Polar wearables used for advanced tracking of various professional athletes in an attempt to optimize performance. It is very interesting to read through various whitepapers and details on the Polar Research Center website. For more than 43 years Polar's internal experts have been developing and publishing these scientific studies and is clearly a leader in biometric data capture and analysis.