Technology keeps evolving and it keeps getting 'smarter' and sleeker, much like these next-gen wristbands designed by scientists with a wireless connection to smartphones, that will enable the next generation of personal health and environmental monitoring devices.
Adding a technology that's described in the journal Microsystems & Nanoengineering to watches, it enables them to manage heart rates and physical activity. "It's like a Fitbit but has a biosensor that can count particles, so that includes blood cells, bacteria and organic or inorganic particles in the air," said Mehdi Javanmard, an assistant professor at Rutgers University-New Brunswick in the US. "Current wearables can measure only a handful of physical parameters such as heart rate and exercise activity," said Abbas Furniturewalla, lead author of the study. "The ability for a wearable device to monitor the counts of different cells in our bloodstream would take personal health monitoring to the next level," Furniturewalla added.
Including a flexible circuit board and a biosensor with a channel, or pipe, thinner than the diameter of a human hair with gold electrodes embedded inside, it even has a circuit to process electrical signals, a micro-controller for digitising data and a Bluetooth module to transmit data wirelessly. Blood samples are obtained through pinpricks, with the blood fed through the channel and blood cells counted. The data is then sent wirelessly to an Android smartphone with an app that processes and displays data, and the technology can also work in iPhones or any other smartphone. Blood cell counts can be used to diagnose illness. "There is a whole range of diseases where blood cell counts are very important," Javanmard said. These wristbands eliminate the need for expensive, bulky lab-based equipment altogether.
