What You Should Know:
– Epicore Biosystems (‘Epicore’), a digital health company developing advanced sweat-sensing wearables to provide real-time personalized hydration insights for performance and safety, today announced the commercial launch of Connected Hydration.
– Connected Hydration is the first sweat-sensing wearable patch and mobile app that equips workers with customized, real-time insights about sweat volume loss, electrolyte loss, body temperature and body movement to inform their hydration needs ahead of adverse dehydration events.
Empowering Industrial Athletes: Introducing Connected Hydration for Enhanced Worker Safety and Performance
The advanced biowearable is crafted to safeguard frontline workers in physically demanding industries such as energy, construction, mining, utilities, agriculture, trucking, warehouse packaging, and military operations. It aims to shield them from dehydration, heat stress, and related injuries.
The introduction of Connected Hydration comes at a pivotal juncture, coinciding with the escalating impact of climate change. Forecasts indicate that 2024 is poised to become the hottest year on record. Prolonged exposure to extreme heat has been scientifically linked to cognitive decline, physiological dysfunction, and diminished physical performance, all critical aspects of industrial occupations. Failure to address these challenges could exacerbate working conditions in the United States, potentially resulting in 450,000 heat-related injuries annually and labor-related productivity losses amounting to $500 billion by 2050. Globally, experts project a 370% surge in heat-related deaths per year and a 50% increase in lost labor hours due to heat exposure if temperatures rise by 2 degrees Celsius.
Connected Hydration has already been adopted across various industrial sectors, including oil and gas, military, engineering services, shipping, climate technology, chemical plants, construction, and manufacturing. Its deployment across four continents and partnership with over 20 multinational corporations signify the rising demand for tailored hydration solutions to safeguard workers.
Comprising a flexible wearable patch, a mobile application, and a cloud engine, Connected Hydration distinguishes itself with an extended battery life surpassing 1,000 hours, eliminating the need for frequent charging. Epicore offers a complimentary coin-cell battery swap service to ensure a seamless and eco-friendly user experience.
The innovative features of Connected Hydration include multiple biosensors for real-time monitoring of sweat, electrolyte levels, skin temperature, thermal flux, and motion. Leveraging machine learning algorithms trained on 420,000 data points, it provides enhanced data accuracy across diverse hydration conditions. Real-time dehydration alerts and alarms are delivered via haptic feedback, while the mobile app enables users to track fluid and electrolyte intake. A comprehensive data dashboard facilitates monitoring of daily and longitudinal biometric changes, supported by a secure cloud engine offering predictive analytics tailored to different work environments and regions. Notably, its design meets stringent safety standards, being certified as intrinsically safe for hazardous environments (CLASS I, DIV 2).
Epicore’s commitment to data security and privacy is reinforced by its completion of System and Organization Controls (SOC) 2 Type II compliance, as per the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) standards. Moreover, the commercial launch of Connected Hydration is underpinned by multiple peer-reviewed scientific publications, including recent research conducted by the University of California, Berkeley, and Chevron Corporation, published in Artificial Intelligence, Social Computing, and Wearable Technologies.
“The trajectory of extreme heat requires connected worker solutions that go far beyond a one-size-fits-all approach. As the world continues to warm at an alarming rate, there is an urgent need for technology that provides industrial workers access to their own hydration data and alerts them at the exact moment they’re at risk of dehydration,” said Dr. Roozbeh Ghaffari, CEO and co-founder of Epicore Biosystems. “Epicore is proud to fulfill that need with the commercial launch of Connected Hydration, which is already in use by thousands of workers worldwide to prevent dehydration and heat-related illness. As we continue establishing ourselves as a global leader in the hydration sector, worker safety remains one of our top priorities.”
