CALERA, a new technology by greenTEG, has earned a CES 2022 Innovation Award. CALERA is a wearable solution for monitoring core body temperature. Compact, waterproof, and easy to mass-produce, CALERA offers a comfortable, non-invasive, wearable solution that provides continuous core temperature monitoring.
The temperature of the body’s internal organs, or core body temperature, is a parameter that provides much information about overall health and response to factors such as disease, stress, and exercise. Core body temperature fluctuates due to physiological causes such as circadian rhythm, menstrual cycles, fitness levels, and eating habits, as well as environmental conditions.
Many wearables use skin temperature measurements to estimate core body temperature. Unfortunately, this option doesn’t yield reliably accurate results because external factors easily affect the temperature of surface skin. The gold standards for accurately measuring core body temperature include swallowable pills containing miniature thermometers, heart or bladder catheters, and rectal probes.
CALERA consists of tiny thermal-transfer sensors that measure the heat available through the skin, rather than the skin’s surface temperature. While in use, CALERA’s machine learning technology develops an AI algorithm based on a database of gold-standard measurements and individual patterns, analyzing the raw sensor data in real-time. The algorithm can also recognize patterns that could predict a health condition before it occurs. Makers of wearable devices can license the CALERA technology to incorporate it into their own products. greenTEG has also developed its own wearable known as CORE, a device that can be worn on the chest via a strap or medical adhesive patch.
Continuous core temperature recording can enhance wearable monitoring for illness, sleep tracking, fertility, workforce safety, remote patient monitoring, exercise, and athletics. Six gold medalists in Tokyo’s 2021 Olympics used CORE during training for cycling, triathlon, and volleyball to help prepare for competing in Japan’s severe summer climate.
