The future of Cockpit Safety-- Validating Lumia in-ear wearable for hypoxia monitoring at high altitudes

Critical decision making in aviation is often limited by a lack of timely physiological information. In a six year period, the Air Force alone reported more than 700 in-flight physiological emergencies (PEs) where pilots experienced adverse symptoms and/or became disoriented. In that same time period there were nearly 200 military aviation deaths across all DoD branches. The mishaps occurred during more than 6,000 routine training events, and cost the government more than $9.4 billion in damages, including 157 destroyed aircraft.Hypoxia is the number one hazard during high altitude missions and the brain is the first part of the body to reflect low oxygen supply– evidenced by a loss of judgment. Unfortunately, the current status quo– hypoxia awareness training– isn’t cutting it, as aircrew may recognize late symptoms of hypoxia but they measure the degree of their impairment or predict their loss of consciousness. By 35,000 feet there is less than 60 seconds of useful consciousness without supplemental oxygen– ultimately this can lead to death.  711th  Human Performance Wing is responding to in-flight PEs with its Integrated Cockpit Sensing (ICS) Program aimed at “identify[ing] best-of-breed sensors for near-term operational implementation… to prevent and/or mitigate the effects of physiological events,” according to Dr. James Christensen, 711 HPW Product Line Lead. So far, they have not identified any cockpit-eligible device measuring cerebral hemodynamics– a key research interest area. STAT Health delivers the world’s smallest wearable, Lumia– a multi-patent pending in-ear device that measures blood flow to the head.  Lumia is the first and only wearable device to measure blood flow to the head and utilizes this biometric data to predict loss of consciousness up to 12 minutes before it occurs,  as validated by Johns Hopkins University, published in March 2023-- unlocking the possibilities of real-time in-flight monitoring.  Furthermore, at the 2024 American Autonomic Society Conference, Lumia technology was shown to strongly correlate with the gold standard, Transcranial Doppler (TCD) ultrasound, achieving a Pearson correlation of 0.91 for Carotid Flow Time, a key measure of blood flow to the head. With Lumia, pilots  will be able to detect blood flow and pressure drops at the level of the brain which are key indicators of potentially lethal conditions such as hypoxia-induced loss of consciousness (H-LOC) and gravity-induced loss of consciousness (G-LOC). When complete, this Phase II will provide the ability to continuously monitor pilot brain health during flight by combining Lumia’s existing hemodynamic algorithms with newly validated SpO2 and pulse rate algorithms. Together, these physiological markers unlock the ability to monitor 1.) Increases in brain blood flow reflecting an increased demand for oxygen and impending risk for hypoxia 2.) Drops in brain blood flow indicating insufficient oxygen and impeding hypoxia.