A research team at Northwestern University has designed a quarter-sized, flexible patch that sticks on the skin and can be used to measure the wearer’s sweat and determine how his or her body is reacting to exercise. It has been successfully tested on athletes.
The low-cost electronic device is designed for a one-time use of just a few hours. Once on the skin, it analyzes biomarkers – a measurable substance in an organism whose presence indicates an infection or disease – to help someone determine if he or she needs to drink more water or even if there is a medical issue.
“We already know how to put electronics on the skin in a natural manner — here our challenge was dealing with fluid flow and the collection, storage and analysis of sweat in a thin, soft and flexible device,” Yonggang Huang, who is a professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and also working on the device, said.
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It is able to capture store and analyze sweat in nearly real-time and uses colorimetic analysis to determine the wearer’s biomarker levels. It doesn’t have to be plugged into a power source to read the patch. Instead, users can snap a picture of the biomarker reading on their smartphone and view the results.
The product has been tested on a group of indoor cyclists and a group of outdoor, long-distance cyclists. The first group was in a gym with controlled conditions while the other was riding the El Tour de Tuscon. When the athletes sweat, the device has chemical reactants that turn different colors that correspond to the users pH and concentrations glucose, chloride and lactate.
This study found that the patch worked on both the long distance and controlled environment cyclists. With the outdoor cyclists, the study was testing the devices’ durability. It found that the results agreed with the indoor cyclists’ results.
In the future, the microfluid mechanism that is placed directly on the forearm or back could be used to diagnose disease. Currently, the patch is able to detect the presence of a biomarker for cystic fibrosis.