Snyder's team took advantage of the portability and ease of using wearable devices to collect a myriad of measurements from participants for up to two years to detect deviations from their normal baseline for measurements such as heart rate and skin temperature. Because the devices continuously follow these measures, they potentially provide rapid means to detect the onset of diseases that change your physiology. Many of these deviations coincided with times when people became ill. Heart rate and skin temperature tends to rise when people become ill, said Snyder. His team wrote a software program for data from a smart watch called 'Change of Heart' to detect these deviations and sense when people are becoming sick. The devices were able to detect common colds and in one case helped detect Lyme disease -- in Snyder, who participated in the study. - www.sciencedaily.com