TECHNOLOGY
Keeping track of your health may soon be as easy as slapping on a wristband.
– The sweat of your brow a new medical monitor
Instead of dreaded trips to the lab to get blood drawn, look forward to the future where a nifty wristband monitors your metabolic health 24/7. University of California, Berkeley, scientists have just built the prototype, as reported in Nature in January.
So far, wearable devices like the popular Fitbit monitor heart rate or the number of steps you take but don’t reveal body chemistry. Sweat is a good mirror of what’s going on in the body but measuring its components has been daunting because they are present at low concentration. Previous prototypes measured single chemicals. But to understand what is happening to the body, requires the measurement of multiple chemicals simultaneously, and continuously. That’s what the Berkeley researchers reported.
Their device packs five sensors and ten silicon chips into a thin flexible, transparent band. It senses glucose, lactate, sodium and potassium ions and temperature by using both electrical and enzyme reactions. All this data is relayed to a smartphone.
For athletes, this information could make the difference between winning and losing. Rising lactate levels could signal the onset of a debilitating cramp; rising sodium – dehydration. Glucose levels in sweat may also warn of falling or rising blood sugar levels which is important for monitoring diabetes, though this relationship is less clear.
The Berkeley researchers tested the device by comparing sweat samples collected from 26 healthy volunteers as they exercised.
This is just the beginning, they say: “Wearable sensor technologies are essential to the realisation of personalised medicine.”
And it seems healthcare systems are eager for them. The UK’S National Health Service recently announced proposals to roll out wearable devices like Fitbits.