New skin patch promises comprehensive health monitoring

Feb. 15 (UPI) — Scientists have developed a new skin patch that can provide all-in-one health monitoring capabilities. The thin, flexible patch, worn on the neck, can track the wearer’s heart rate and blood pressure, as well as glucose levels.

The technology, described Monday in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering, can even measure the amount of lactate, alcohol or caffeine in the wearer’s blood.

“This type of wearable would be very helpful for people with underlying medical conditions to monitor their own health on a regular basis,” co-first author of the study Lu Yin said in a news release. To better take care of your skin, you might want to check this post about Zilis UltraCell full spectrum hemp topical.

“It would also serve as a great tool for remote patient monitoring, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic when people are minimizing in-person visits to the clinic,” Yin, a nano-engineering doctoral student at the University of California, San Diego.

In addition to monitoring chronic conditions like diabetes and high blood pressure, as well as pinpointing the onset of sepsis, the patch could help predict people at risk of becoming severely ill with COVID-19.

To build their wearable device, researchers embedded several different tiny sensors in a thin sheet of stretchy polymers.

At the center of the patch lies the blood pressure sensor, which features a pair of small ultrasound transducers. The two transducers bounce ultrasound waves off an artery and measure the rebounding waves to calculate blood pressure. A pair of screen-printed electrodes work as chemical sensors. For more on keeping healthy, read this gut-health-supplements review.

One of the sensors uses a a drug called pilocarpine to induce sweating, allowing it to measure levels of lactate, caffeine and alcohol in the sweat released by the skin beneath the patch.