Building Resilience to Extreme Environments: The Role of Wearables and Artificial Intelligence to Monitor Physiological Parameters in Real-Life Conditions

Recent advances in wearable technologies now enable the monitoring of physiological features over extended periods of time. Whether consumer-grade or researcher-grade, more wearable devices can be used in extreme environments for recreational as well as occupational reasons to provide important information, if appropriate methods are applied to analyse these very large datasets.

The research topic aims at exploring the potential applications of such devices to address key challenges in extreme environments, where humans must adapt to survive and maintain their level of cognitive and physical performance. This includes microgravity, high altitude, isolation & confinement, extreme cold, and particularly extreme heat – a growing global concern. This research topic targets initiatives, expanding beyond simple data collection to address the problematics of signal quality assessment, data post-processing, feature generation, and artificial intelligence (AI)-based modelling. Indeed, such AI models have the potential to uncover deeper insights into individual and group-level physiological responses, predict performance and health risks, and inform the development of personalized countermeasures.

This research topic is, by essence, interdisciplinary, and researchers from diverse specialties as for example: physiology, data science, biomedical engineering, historical science history or in-field physiology, etc.) are encouraged to contribute. More generally, we welcome original research, reviews, study protocols, and perspectives that contribute to:

- The validation and application of wearable sensors in extreme environments;
- Novel AI models for risk assessment and prediction of physiological changes and health impact/disease;
- Data processing pipelines (based on AI or not) tailored to real-world, noisy data obtained from wearable devices;
- Practical considerations in long-term physiological monitoring;
- Translational research bridging extreme environment physiology and clinical practice, contributing to health systems development, and fostering personalized, digital medicine, including related ethical aspects of this type of research.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Conceptual Analysis
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Conceptual Analysis
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Review
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Physiological monitoring, wearable technologies, extreme envinroemtns, artificial intelligence modeling, digital medicine, personalized medicine

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.