(92c) Fabric-Based Wearable Health Sensors

The need for well-managed hydration and the monitoring of physiological parameters in real-time is not only crucial for athletes to optimize performance but to also prevent illness and injury from occurring. Understanding sweat loss and calculating hydration requirements to avoid dehydration or overhydration is a significant challenge for athletes. This is because sweat losses vary significantly from athlete to athlete both in terms of concentration of electrolytes and total volume of sweat lost. When sweating, an individual may lose as little as ~200mg of sodium per liter or as much as ~2000 mg. This variance, combined with significant differences in sweat volume, lead to vastly different hydration requirements among individuals. The RooSense SweatID system is the first lightweight fabric sensor to provide real-time information regarding hydration levels during exercise or training through selective determination of sodium levels, a better marker for athletic performance, safety, and injury.

Monitoring sweat is a compelling choice to gain insight into a person’s health at the molecular level, as sweat is rich in physiological and metabolic information that can be obtained non-invasively. In spite of advances made towards the detection of biomarkers in sweat, there is no sensor capable of long-term detection in constricted or load-bearing applications where other flexible plastic sensors might cause discomfort. Textile-based and nanocomposite technologies provide an optimum scaffold for monitoring biomarkers at the surface of the skin as they do not influence the sweat composition or sweat rate and can be seamlessly integrated for wearable sensing and translational medicine applications.

This presentation will focus on the development of a prototype wearable hydration monitor, validation of the prototype in the laboratory, and on body testing in an exercise physiology laboratory.