Tiger Tech Solutions, a Miami-based small business led by CEO Harrison Wittels and COO Rick Whittington, has spent more than a decade building wearable biometric technology designed for environments where traditional medical monitoring systems often fail.
In an interview with Military.com at the eMerge Americas Conference, Wittels and Whittington described the company as focused on edge-based physiological monitoring systems capable of operating without relying on cloud computing or large external infrastructure. The company’s core wearable platform uses a single-arm sensor capable of collecting electrocardiogram data, autonomic nervous system measurements, and other physiological metrics without requiring the chest leads typically associated with hospital EKG systems.
“We developed the world’s first single limb electrocardiogram,” Wittels said during the interview. “We can look at something called your autonomic nervous system, which is something only we can do in this special way.”
Tiger Tech’s wearable systems differ from many commercial biometric devices because they are designed for military, aviation, and austere operational environments rather than consumer wellness applications. Wittels stated that devices requiring adhesive chest patches, cloud synchronization, or active user participation often fail in real-world combat conditions involving sweat, body armor, dirt and long-duration missions.
The company’s primary sensor is a band worn on the arm, which Wittels said became a practical decision after working with military personnel carrying radios, GPS devices, altimeters, gloves, and body armor that already occupy most of the body.
Tiger Tech says its systems process data directly on the device itself rather than continuously transmitting information to external cloud servers. According to Wittels, that design was intentional from the beginning because the company believed combat environments and denied communications environments would make constant cloud connectivity unreliable and potentially insecure.
“We said we’re not going to do that because it’s never going to scale,” Wittels said. “All of our stuff happens on edge on the device, which makes it incredibly secure.”
Tiger Tech’s official website similarly describes the company as developing “AI-powered wearable biometrics” focused on edge computing and real-time physiological monitoring for defense, aviation and healthcare applications.
From COVID Detection to Battlefield Monitoring
Tiger Tech gained national attention during the COVID-19 pandemic after receiving an Emergency Use Authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for a non-invasive AI platform designed to identify COVID-related biomarkers through physiological monitoring.
Their system used autonomic nervous system measurements to help identify physiological changes associated with COVID-19 infection. Wittels said during the interview that the pandemic became a major proving ground for wearable biometric systems because many companies had promised predictive health monitoring for years without producing operational systems. “We’re the only company in the world to actually produce something during COVID,” Wittels said.
The company has also published and presented research involving heat stress, cognitive load, cancer biomarkers and blast overpressure exposure. Blast overpressure has become a growing concern across the military, particularly among artillery crews, breachers, snipers, and special operations personnel repeatedly exposed to low-level concussive force during training and combat.
The Department of Defense has increasingly studied the cumulative neurological effects of repeated blast exposure, even when no immediate traumatic brain injury is diagnosed.
Whittington, an Army veteran with a background in special operations and infantry leadership, said Tiger Tech’s systems allow researchers to quantify physiological changes that previously existed mostly as anecdotal complaints among service members.
The company has also worked with airborne and military free-fall communities to study the cumulative physiological effects of parachute opening shock. According to Whittington, Tiger Tech’s data helped expand discussions beyond landing injuries by focusing on the chronic strain repeated jumps place on the body over time. “We’re able to quantify it,” Whittington said while discussing parachute opening shock and blast exposure. “The question is, how do we reduce that?”
Landing Helicopters and Monitoring Operators
Tiger Tech’s technology has also been used in aviation research. DEVCOM Aviation & Missile Center researchers partnered with Tiger Tech to demonstrate biometric monitoring during helicopter operations. According to Army researchers, the wearable system monitored physiological responses in real time while pilots operated aircraft in degraded visual environments.
Wittels referenced the project during the interview, describing it as the first time the company successfully used its biometric monitoring platform during helicopter landings in degraded conditions.
The company is now expanding into underwater and decompression-related research after waterproofing portions of its wearable system. Wittels said Tiger Tech recently partnered with Divers Alert Network EU, a major diving safety organization, to study decompression physiology and related biometric monitoring.
Tiger Tech also works with athletic organizations, including the University of Miami football program, where the company assists with biometric monitoring and physiological analysis.
A Different Vision of Battlefield Awareness
One of Tiger Tech’s broader goals is to integrate physiological monitoring into military command-and-control systems to provide commanders with real-time awareness of personnel readiness and survivability.
Whittington described a battlefield environment where commanders often know where units are located through systems like Blue Force Tracker but lack immediate visibility into whether troops are injured, incapacitated, or otherwise physiologically compromised. “What we can do is give you a method of knowing in real time,” Whittington said. “Hey, all of a sudden, the left flank just went red.”
That approach aligns with broader Pentagon efforts to improve real-time battlefield medical awareness and human performance monitoring. Researchers have increasingly explored wearable systems capable of tracking fatigue, stress, injury, and cognitive degradation in operational environments.
Despite working with military organizations, Wittels and Whittington repeatedly emphasized the challenges small defense technology companies face in navigating Pentagon acquisition systems. Whittington said modern warfare environments such as Ukraine increasingly reward rapid adaptation cycles measured in weeks rather than years. “If you look at Ukraine, they’re innovating in 30-day windows because of how dirty the environment is,” Whittington said.
For Tiger Tech, the company’s broader argument is that wearable biometrics should move beyond consumer fitness tracking and become operational tools for aviation, medicine, military readiness, and human performance in extreme environments.
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