News and Publications

Jan 25, 2019

An Underwater Skin Sensor Lets Swimmers Track Their Sweat

Wired

SPORTS TEAMS COLLECT sweat to analyze athlete performance, while companies market sweat replacement drinks and sweat-removal clothing to help keep sprinters, cyclists, and tennis players happy. But so far, swimmers have been left high and dry.

Today a team of researchers announced they have built a small, flexible, wireless sensor that sticks to a swimmer’s skin, allowing athletes to measure how much they need to drink during a workout or race. The device picks up sweat secretions from a person’s skin and channels the fluid into a chemical reagent mixed with food dye. It then turns the patch different colors corresponding to a person’s chloride levels—much like a pH strip for sweat. It also measures body temperature and sweat loss rate.

Jan 18, 2019

Your Sweat Will See You Now

New York Times

A new generation of devices instead aim to analyze sweat for many chemicals at once, producing a real-time snapshot of the wearer’s health or fitness. These devices also fit intimately against the skin, and are comfortable for anyone, from premature babies to the elderly. One version is already being advertised by Gatorade.

L'Oréal Unveils Prototype Of First-Ever Wearable Microfluidic Sensor To Measure Skin pH Levels

PR Newswire

LAS VEGAS, Jan. 6, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- CES® - L'Oréal today introduced a prototype of the latest innovation from the L'Oréal Technology Incubator at the 2019 Consumer Electronics Show. My Skin Track pH by La Roche-Posay is the first wearable sensor and companion app to easily measure personal skin pH levels and create customized product regimens to better care for skin. My Skin Track pH has been honored with a CES 2019 Innovation Award, named a "Best of Innovation" winner in the Wearable Technology Products category. The sensor was co-developed with L'Oréal's skincare brand La Roche-Posay, which works closely with dermatologists to develop safe and effective skincare products and is committed to bringing scientific progress directly to consumers.

Dec 21, 2018

Serena Williams talks about her new tech-infused Gatorade ad

Fast Company

Back in late 2015, Gatorade was developing a new system of products to help athletes evaluate, measure, and replace the types of electrolytes their bodies need most. Measurement was done by a bandage-like patch that monitors sweat rate and type, while a variety of small pods that differed in electrolyte type could be mixed with water in specially designed sport bottles. All this was designed to give athletes the best possible advantage through the most efficient hydration. Now three years later, Serena Williams is rocking the patch and pod combo in a new ad campaign called “You Fuel Us, We Fuel You.”

LEO Science & Tech Hub Partners with Epicore Biosystems to Explore Wearable Skin Sensors to Improve Dermatologic Treatment Regimens

Business Wire

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--LEO Science & Tech Hub, the Boston-based R&D innovation unit of LEO Pharma, has announced a new partnership with Epicore Biosystems focused on exploring the use of a non-invasive, wearable sweat sensor to measure prognostic biomarkers in real time, monitor patient response and inform treatment decisions. The initial project will include a proof of concept study in collaboration with engineers and dermatologists at Northwestern University’s Center for Bio-Integrated Electronics and Feinberg School of Medicine’s Department of Dermatology to establish baseline measurements and milestones to validate the clinical relevance of the approach for patients with atopic dermatitis (eczema).

Mar 20, 2018

Gatorade, Northwestern University partner on sweat-reading hydration patch

mobihealth news

Gatorade’s efforts to conquer dehydration have again entered the digital realm. Twice reports that the sports drink company and Northwestern University have developed a low-cost wearable skin patch that displays various colors to conveniently let the wearer know when they need to take a drink.

The patches were developed and introduced in 2016 by Northwestern University McCormick School of Engineering professor John A. Rogers, who told Twice that the devices could make their way to retail within a year, and potentially at a price point of just $3. These patches, which were also profiled last month by Northwestern University’s communications publication, Northwestern Now, can measure chloride loss, glucose, lactate, pH levels, and concentrations of heavy metals in the wearer’s sweat.

New microfluidic devices help athletes and enhance physical rehab

Northwestern University

EVANSTON - Northwestern University professor John A. Rogers is collaborating with a broad collection of partners including Gatorade, the Seattle Mariners, the U.S. Air Force and Shirley Ryan AbilityLab to bring his wearable microfluidic sweat analytics system into widespread distribution.

Skin-interfaced systems for sweat collection and analytics

Science Advances

Recent interdisciplinary advances in materials, mechanics, and microsystem designs for biocompatible electronics, soft microfluidics, and electrochemical biosensors establish the foundations for emerging classes of thin, skin-interfaced platforms capable of capturing, storing, and performing quantitative, spatiotemporal measurements of sweat chemistry, instantaneous local sweat rate, and total sweat loss. This review summarizes scientific and technical progress in this area and highlights the implications in real time and ambulatory modes of deployment during physical activities across a broad range of contexts in clinical health, physiology research, fitness/wellness, and athletic performance.

Super-Absorbent Polymer Valves and Colorimetric Chemistries for Time-Sequenced Discrete Sampling and Chloride Analysis of Sweat via Skin-Mounted Soft Microfluidics

Small Journal

This paper introduces super absorbent polymer valves and colorimetric sensing reagents as enabling components of soft, skin-mounted microfluidic devices designed to capture, store, and chemically analyze sweat released from eccrine glands. The valving technology enables robust means for guiding the flow of sweat from an inlet location into a collection of isolated reservoirs, in a well-defined sequence.

Jan 21, 2018

Wearable sensors: modalities, challenges, and prospects

Lab on a Chip

Wearable sensors have recently seen a large increase in both research and commercialization. However, success in wearable sensors has been a mix of both progress and setbacks. There have also been significant challenges in making significant fundamental improvements to existing mechanical, electrical, and optical sensing modalities, especially in improving their specificity of detection. Many of these challenges can be understood by appreciating the body's surface (skin) as more of an information barrier than as an information source.

Unlocking New Sensor Applications, Increasing Data Accuracy, and Untethering Patients

NextFlex Alliance

The number of new medical devices brought to market in the last 10 years is staggering. Consumers now have access to pulse oximeters, IR thermometers, automated heart rate monitors, and even active intervention devices such as Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs) that were previously only available to hospitals and medical professionals. The pace of device introduction is only increasing, and since better data requires better interfaces with humans, flexible hybrid electronics (FHE) are uniquely positioned to capitalize on growing opportunities for remote patient monitoring and home diagnostics—two major drivers of this growth.

Engineer’s Innovation Exhibited as Art

Northwestern University

EVANSTON - Northwestern University engineer John A. Rogers has done something remarkable, steering his innovative "bio-integrated lab" invention to a rare level of cultural prominence as part of an art exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).

MoMA’s new exhibition -- “Items: Is Fashion Modern?” -- opened Sunday (Oct. 1) to critical acclaim in New York City, where the exhibit is exploring the past, present and future of 111 garments and accessories that have strongly impacted society and culture over the last century. The curators read about the Rogers invention, were taken by the artistic aspects of his design and invited him to include it.

Jun 16, 2017

Soft, skin-mounted microfluidic systems for measuring secretory fluidic pressures generated at the surface of the skin by eccrine sweat glands