Wristband will notify you if the air is clean

Scientists have developed a plastic wristband with a wireless connection to smartphones, that will enable the next-generation of personal health and environmental monitoring devices. The technology, described in the journal Microsystems & Nanoengineering, could be added to watches and other wearable devices that monitor heart rates and physical activity.

“It’s like a Fitbit, but has a biosensor that can count particles, so that includes blood cells, bacteria and organic or inorganic particles in the air,” said Mehdi Javanmard, an assistant professor at Rutgers University-New Brunswick in the US.

“Current wearables can measure only a handful of physical parameters such as heart rate and exercise activity,” said Abbas Furniturewalla, lead author of the study. “The ability for a wearable device to monitor the counts of different cells in our bloodstream would take personal health monitoring to the next level,” Furniturewalla said.

The plastic wristband includes a flexible circuit board and a biosensor with a channel, or pipe, thinner than the diameter of a human hair with gold electrodes embedded inside. It has a circuit to process electrical signals, a micro-controller for digitising data and a Bluetooth module to transmit data wirelessly. The data are sent wirelessly to an Android smartphone with an app that processes and displays data, and the technology can also work in iPhones or any other smartphone.