[Image above] Wearable sweat sensor developed by engineers at UC Berkeley can monitor a person’s health through perspiration. Credit: Berkeley News; YouTube

As it turns out, sweat can reveal more about you than just how hard you rocked it at the gym today.

Engineers at the University of California, Berkeley have developed a prototype for a flexible, wearable sensor system that can “measure metabolites and electrolytes in sweat, calibrate the data based upon skin temperature, and sync the results in real time to a smartphone,” according to a recent UC Berkeley news release.

The prototype—developed by Ali Javey, UC Berkeley professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences and the study’s principal investigator, and his research team—consists of five sensors secured to a flexible circuit board. The sensors measure metabolites glucose and lactate, electrolytes sodium and potassium, and skin temperature.

“Human sweat contains physiologically rich information, thus making it an attractive body fluid for non-invasive wearable sensors,” Javey says in the release. “However, sweat is complex and it is necessary to measure multiple targets to extract meaningful information about your state of health. In this regard, we have developed a fully integrated system that simultaneously and selectively measures multiple sweat analytes and wirelessly transmits the processed data to a smartphone. Our work presents a technology platform for sweat-based health monitors.”

Check out the video below from UC Berkeley about the research.

Credit: Berkeley News; YouTube

The open-access paper, published in Nature, is “Fully integrated wearable sensor arrays for multiplexed in situ perspiration analysis” (DOI: 10.1038/nature16521).

Author

Stephanie Liverani

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