Recent research brings to the fore the fact that wearable devices can work as digital diagnostic instruments due to their usefulness in detecting specific health conditions. In this overview we want to take a look at a promising development in the field of wearable devices for diagnosis: a portable tool that is able to check nutrition elements, hormones, and drugs in a human organism.
Wearable devices as a real-time patient health checking solution
The application of wearable tech solutions in the sector of healthcare has significantly grown in the past years. Not a long time ago, a sophisticated diagnostic computer with functions of measuring moveable particles in the circulatory system would have been a massive, bumbling, and voluminous thing, but due to constant technical development, currently, the key features of such systems are portability and straightforwardness in use. The main contributor to such developments is a range of innovations in processing technologies and the ever-tinier sizes they can be manufactured in.
A group of scientists in the Cherng Dep. of Medical Engineering lately introduced this new tool allowing for realtime checking of intermediate products of metabolic reactions and nutritious elements in the blood of persons wearing it. They demonstrated how it manages to enucleate the smallest quantities of nutrient elements and other particles in sweat. These tiniest particles can count for important biological markers for checking up on human health in real-time conditions.
The biosensor was created in the WeiGao laboratory, which has been creating wearable technologies as this for a long. This newest, more accurate tool presents a new vertex of its efforts backed by many years.
Maybe the most fascinating fact about the new technology is that it applies synthetic polymers with a predetermined selectivity for a given analyte, which is programmed to operate like man-made, long-lasting immunoglobulins. These polymers are joint with stuff that can be then subject to oxidization or lessening when an electrical pressure is forwarded contacting with sweat.
At the end of the day, the device employs microfluidic study, which applies a plethora of microtubes lesser than 0.25 millimeters wide to soak up minute volumes of fluids. This makes it possible for the device to track certain particles even provided that the volume of fluid is microscale.
The sensor-based arrangement has been exposed to test by voluntary individuals in the laboratory ending with optimistic outcomes. Soon, the researchers hope to test the development in further bigger studies as the next step.
Design and application of biological sensors
Biological sensors for the ongoing checking of intermediate products of metabolic reactions in perspiration can determine several chemical substances at adequately high concentration, normally during dynamic exercising to produce enough quantity of the biological fluid. The element behind the biosensor is graphene-based materials as electrodes. They have the following characteristics:
- can be used in a reusable way,
- can be joint with metabοlite-specific antibody-alike pοlymers with a molecular imprint and redοx-active repοrter nano-particles, and
- are pooled with parts for iontophoresis-grounded inducing and sampling of perspiration, signal procession, and cordless message.
In individuals participating in research, the sensor-enabled the tracing of the amount of aminoacids and their degreess while going in for sport, and the estimation of the probability of metabolic syndrοme – a cluster of conditions that occur together, increasing the probability of getting a diagnosis of heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes.
The bottom line
As the biosensor can assess a variety of elements, the usefulness here is going without saying. The possibility to trace biochanges in a real-time regime could open up a pathway for scientists to collect precious data and assist in informing further research.
Alongside testing for ageing interposition, such a device could also gain popularity in use in the healthcare wearable techs markets. It could also possess high value for individuals with hyperglycemia, assisting to control glucose degrees.
The capacity to constantly check biological markers in the regime in real-time has practically boundless use cases, and this is a remarkable step in health condition check-ups.
