Darpa Goal: Psychic Doctors

Most of us start wheezing, or coughing, or sniffling -- then we go see a doctor, to get treated for the flu. The Pentagon's mad science division wants to flip that around: Constantly monitoring troops' health, so diseases can be spotted, before the first sniffle. It's like having a having a doctor with a stethoscope... and a crystal ball, too.

The Predicting Health and Disease (PHD) Program will generate methods to assess whether an individual will develop an infectious disease prior to the onset of symptoms. While current methods diagnose and treat after an individual reports to a physician, the PHD Program seeks to alter this paradigm by identifying changes in the baseline state of human health through frequent surveillance. The vision is to maintain
100-percent warfighter readiness by detecting, intervening, and eliminating disease before the emergence of symptoms.

DARPA doesn't say how the trick might be pulled off -- only that it will require, "at the minimum, innovative data analytic methodologies coupled with traditional and non-traditional medical diagnostic[s]." But the agency does know what kinds of illnesses it would like to spot.

We are mainly interested in viral, upper respiratory pathogens that have the potential for decreasing warfighter mission readiness, and occasionally result in aborted missions and significant warfighter morbidity. Pathogens of interest include influenza, parainfluenza, adenovirus, respiratory syncytial virus, and other similar viruses.

And since soldiers don't have time to wait, the agency wants the detection done in a hurry. "DARPA’s end goal is to create the technological breakthroughs required for the development of a field-portable, point-of-care health assessment system that is able to handle large throughput (100 or more analyses), in short time spans (under a 3-hour turnaround), at low costs.
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Good luck, docs.