We are now familiar with common fitness trackers, which can track activities, sleep, calories or heart rate. However, recently researchers are focusing on tracking sweat. This is because sweat can reveal more about the health of the body. In fact, many researches have shown that sweat stores great data. Up until now, it was too difficult to measure it on patients and people. WT | Wearable Technologies would like to provide you an overview about wearables equipped with sweat-sensor on the market to see how and where this technology evolves.
ECHO Monitor
ECHO is a smart patch which analyses critical biomarkers such as sodium and potassium, all from a single bead of sweat. Everyone sweats – it’s an essential function of a healthy body. ECHO smart patch disappears under your clothes by adhering directly to your torso. This part is known to be highly accurate and provides reliable analysis of vital signs. Regarding your sweat rate and volume, ECHO only needs the smallest micro-bead to perform an analysis of key biomarkers. By using more inputs, ECHO smart patch gives out better and more accuracy results throughout multiple sensors signals.
Embrace
Embrace watch is a product of Empatica which is aimed to help people living with epilepsy. Beyond that, Embrace is simple to monitor physiological stress, arousal, sleep and physical activity. There are 4 sensors that provide the most accurate result. Accelerometer sensors are also used to capture movement while gyroscope sensor uses Earth’s gravity to help determine orientation. Electrodermal activity sensor recognizes physiological stress, for example through sweat and temperature sensing. Electrodermal activity (EDA) a.k.a Galvanic Skin Response (GSR), is autonomic data that is activated by regions deep in the brain involved in emotion such as fear, anxiety and positive excitement. Therefore, EDA is strongly activated during the kinds of seizures which a region of brain is shut down to breathe.
Halo Wearables
Since September 2015 Halo Wearables finished its final prototype that tracks athletes’ hydration which has many sports teams as interested customers. The completed sweat-tracking H1 will be announced early this year. H1 has a smartwatch look with sensors that monitor a user’s hydration status. Optical sensors and two electromagnetic pads are integrated on the backside of the watch. Optical sensors track sodium and potassium levels from sweat. It also includes a thermistor which meausres skin temperature, humidity and air temperature. The Halo H1 analyze the data in real time and provide users with a relative value of their hydration on a scale of 100-1 using the 3 Halo index: green, yellow and red. Green zone lets users know tanks are full. Yellow zone informs users to consider fuel up soon. Red zone warns users tanks are empty.
Biolinq – Temporary Tattoo Biosensor
Biolinq as known as Electrozyme is a temporary tattoo biosensor which provides blood level info without accessing blood. Biolinq develops skin-applied electrochemical sensors that analyse body fluids to provide actionable health information. Additionally, Biolinq sensing capabilities include the assessment of metabolites and electrolytes in order to provide users with chemical information that can be used to maximize performance and gain insight into the metabolic implication of users’ physical activity. Refer to our interview with Joshua Windmiller – CEO of Biolinq for more information about product.
Xsensio
Xsensio provides a new technology solution for wearable with intelligent stamps using nanotechnology. Xsensio takes advantages of surface of our skin, electrolytes, metabolites, small molecules and proteins to exploit the goldmine of information about health and wellness in a simple way. Compared to existing solution, Xsensio sensing technology platform is 10000 smaller in size.
There are not so many sweat-tracking wearables available on the market at the moment. However, one day your fitness tracker can move on from counting steps and tracking your heart rate to crunching data on something else: your sweat. A group of researchers from the University of California, Berkeley has developed a wearable sensor that can monitor various components in sweat.
Sources : et al. Nature http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature16521 (2016)
According to paper in Nature, the sensor can measure levels of chemicals in sweat such as potassium and lactate. Moreover, it can keep track of skin temperature. The wireless sensor which sends data to a phone via Bluetooth can also be incorporated into wrist and headbands.
More research is needed. However, the technology is expected to apply into wearable devices to study what sweat can tell us about the diseases.
