Empatica Inc. is an MIT Media Lab spinoff company born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, operating in Healthcare, providing AI-enabled tools to advance forecasting, monitoring, research, and treatment.
[2] Empatica's wearables, Embrace2 and E4, track physiological signals such as Heart Rate Variability, electrodermal activity, acceleration and movement, skin temperature, and autonomic arousal.
[citation needed] Empatica Inc. was founded in 2013 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, by Matteo Lai, Simone Tognetti, Maurizio Garbarino and Rosalind Picard.
Picard serves as part-time chief scientist and chairman of the board, while Lai is full-time CEO, Tognetti is CTO, and Garbarino is CSA.
[11] In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Empatica is collaborating with the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command (USAMRDC) to deploy a wearable and algorithm that enables the early and pre-symptomatic detection of COVID-19.
Chief Scientist and co-founder Rosalind Picard and her colleagues at the MIT Media lab were initially working on a wristband to help children on the autism spectrum better communicate their emotional states.
[18] Alert is a mobile app and subscription service that works with Embrace2 to send out an emergency call and text message to listed caregivers, including their exact GPS location.
[27] Following a response to the Request for Project Proposals issued in May 2020, Empatica has received funding from the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command to deploy EmbracePlus (and the Aria algorithm) to enable the early and pre-symptomatic detection of COVID-19.
[30] It is a wearable AI system with an app and online dashboard, that can help contain an infectious transmission by automatically alerting individuals to the earliest physiological signs of a possible infection, even without any symptoms being present.
[31] In November 2020 Empatica has received funding from the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command to deploy Aria (and the EmbracePlus smartwatch) to enable the early and pre-symptomatic detection of COVID-19.