Epicore Biosystems (Epicore), a digital health solutions company developing advanced sweat-sensing wearables, announced that it has inked a 3-year master services agreement (MSA) with Chevron Technical Center, a division of Chevron U.S.A. Inc. to equip Chevron's industrial frontline workers with its Connected Hydration solution. The first deployments are expected to begin in the US in the summer of 2024.

This milestone MSA marks a pivotal moment for Epicore on the heels of several field deployments with Chevron and other enterprises. The Chevron health and safety teams have deployed Epicore's Connected Hydration solution across multiple work sites and conditions over the past two years, leading to its commercial launch in April 2024. Chevron Technology Ventures also invested in Epicore to support the development and commercialization of Connected Hydration.

Connected Hydration is a sweat-sensing wearable biosensor and cloud analytics solution that measures sweat loss, sodium loss, skin temperature, and movement to provide actionable rehydration strategies in real time to industrial workers ahead of adverse dehydration events. The technology enables workers to quantify hydration biomarkers and create actionable routes to rehydration and recovery for industrial workers. Epicore's Connected Hydration solution is a proven sweat-sensing technology that provides individualized rehydration strategies and real-time haptic vibration alarms felt by the workers to proactively inform them to stay safe and hydrate.

"We have spent years developing, validating and deploying Connected Hydration. A master service agreement with a large enterprise like Chevron is a testament to how Epicore Biosystems is bridging the global gap in worker safety when it comes to proper hydration and heat stress solutions," said Dr. Roozbeh Ghaffari, CEO and co-founder of Epicore Biosystems. "We are honored to work with Chevron as one of our first customers and to deploy Connected Hydration, enabling tailored and preventative hydration practices for their frontline workers. The reality is that a conventional, one-size-fits-all approach to heat index tracking falls short in meeting workers' hydration and recovery needs." 

Chevron compiled datasets from over a thousand sweat sessions in total across multiple work sites in the U.S. to explore how behavioral changes take shape when workers utilize Connected Hydration compared to conventional approaches. Health and safety experts along with industrial hygienists observed that Connected Hydration informed and improved hydration habits significantly by increasing worker fluid and electrolyte intake over a one-month time window, via real-time awareness of fluid and electrolyte losses. This sustained change in behavior in response to rehydration feedback was rapid and took place within a few weeks of Connected Hydration use. 

"The entrepreneurial ecosystem's speed, together with the know-how of incumbents - that's a very powerful combination," said Jim Gable, VP of Innovation and President of Technology Ventures for Chevron. "In this case, Chevron and Epicore were able to leverage thousands of work session datasets across multiple sites to enhance the impact of the Connected Hydration technology to keep our employees safe." 

Since its launch in 2017, Epicore has lined up several global collaborators and customers. These enterprises include Chevron, PepsiCo, Denka, Gatorade, Fluor, Nitto, the U.S. Air Force, Office of Naval Research, Army and more.