Tamil Nadu: Scientists Develop Affordable Wearable Sensor That Removes Necessity For Invasive Tests

Dr Vinu Mohan, a recipient of the INSPIRE Faculty Fellowship instituted by the Department of Science and Technology, has developed a flexible low cost, wearable sensor that can track sweat for monitoring the health and physiological status of the human body. It can obviate the necessity of blood and other invasive tests.

The wearable microfluidic sensor, which does not need a clean room, can be used for in situ monitoring of biomarkers such as lactate, Sodium (Na+), Potassium (K+), and Alkaline/acidic nature (pH) simultaneously from sweat samples.

Using the INSPIRE Faculty fellowship, Dr Vinu, scientist at CSIR-Central Electrochemical Research Institute (CECRI) in Karaikudi of Tamil Nadu, is improving upon the sensor to make it stretchable as well so that it can monitor the sweat during exercising and biking, the ministry of Science and Technology said in a statement.

The flexible sensor can be attached on the irregular skin surface and monitors the dynamic biomarker levels, and are important for clinical diagnosis and personalized point-of-care analysis.

In the sensor set up by Dr Vinu’s research group, a fluidic channel captures real-time sweat and directs it through the active sensing electrodes for subsequent interference-free analyses.

A miniaturized printed circuit board collects cross-talk-free sensor responses without the need for wires. The fully-integrated pump-less microfluidic device is mounted on the skin, and the regional variations in sweat composition are analyzed.

The epidermal patch can monitor the hydration level and oxygenation of muscles which is essential for fitness monitoring application. This research has been published in the journal ‘ACS Sensor’.