Siemens announced its participation in the groundbreaking Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) BREATHE program, an up to five-year initiative aimed at improving indoor air quality and reducing respiratory disease incidence by at least 25%. This effort underscores Siemens’ commitment to leveraging technology for healthier, more resilient environments.The BREATHE program intends to advance the next generation of smart and healthy buildings by developing integrated systems that will provide continual measurement and risk assessment of indoor air quality and deploy real-time interventions, like extra ventilation or disinfection, to reduce airborne threats to human health.The BREATHE solutions consist of three technical areas – TA-1: indoor air biosensors, TA-2: respiratory risk assessment software, and TA-3: healthy building controls and system integration. Siemens plays a pivotal role in TA-2 and TA-3, integrating risk assessment models with advanced building control systems to mitigate air quality threats. These solutions will enable automation responses, such as ventilation, filtration, and disinfection, through seamless integration with building management systems.“At Siemens, we believe that digital twin technology is the key to unlocking healthier, safer, and more adaptive indoor environments,” said Virginie Maillard, Global Head of Research in Simulation and Digital Twins for Siemens. “Our commitment to simulation-driven innovation combined with our partner’s cutting-edge biosensor empowers us to model, predict, and optimize simultaneously building performance and occupants' health, making a measurable impact on public health.”
Siemens’ contributions span two BREATHE projects, a Mayo Clinic-led initiative focusing on cutting-edge biosensors, artificial intelligence and smart air filtration systems in emergency departments, and a SafeTraces-led initiative, a closed loop, array PCR real-time risk assessment and sensor-driven mitigation system for healthy indoor air for the Defense Health Agency (DHA) hospital system. Siemens’ digital twin technology enables comprehensive modeling of airflow, temperature, and energy consumption, providing a virtual environment to test these mitigations before deployment. Siemens’ integration of digital twin modeling and simulation and building automation, together with the cutting-edge partners’ biosensor technology, creates a closed-loop, adaptive ecosystem for healthy buildings. These capabilities ensure robust solutions validated through field trials, which will be conducted across multiple U.S. cities in critical infrastructure, to validate performance under diverse conditions.Siemens is collaborating closely with each partner to ensure its technologies deliver measurable health benefits and operational efficiency, with a focus on rapid detection and mitigation of detected pathogens. Siemens’ solutions integrate with risk assessment models, enabling dynamic, automated building responses to real-time biosensor data.