The U.S. military's concerns about the individual combat service member's ability to avoid performance degradation, in conjunction with the need to maintain both mental and physical capabilities in highly stressful situations, have led to an interest in developing methods by which commanders can monitor the status of combat service members in the field. This ability would allow commanders to determine when individuals need to rest, eat, or consume fluids, or if their condition has deteriorated to the point that they need to be replaced rather than risk combat injury.
An IOM report, titled Monitoring Metabolic Status: Predicting Decrements in Physiological and Cognitive Performance during Military Operations, examines current and needed technologies and information that will provide information for command decisions relative to the physiological and psychological "readiness" of each combat service member. Specifically, the report identifies the most promising biomarkers for the prediction of health deterioration, tools for monitoring metabolic status in the field, algorithms to interpret data, and current research investments that may lead to revolutionary advances.
The committee believes that areas that are likely to lead to greater advances are the development of new cognitive measurement approaches, optimization of markers to monitor stress and immune function, the use of odors as biomarkers and human tears as sources of biomarkers, the development of new algorithms to integrate complex biological information, the elucidation of the impact of unexpected hazards on biomarkers of health, and further developments in the field of metabolomics.