UC Case No. 2018-218
SUMMARY
UCLA researchers in the Department of Electrical Engineering have developed a method of in-situ sweat rate monitoring, which can be integrated into wearable consumer electronics for physiological analyses.
BACKGROUND
Despite being a rich source of biomarkers, sweat analysis is not widely used in physiological and clinical settings due to the lack of suitable technologies extracting physiologically meaningful information from the sweat readings. Previous studies have demonstrated some level of correlation between the blood and sweat content in the context of informative biomarkers. However, the correlations varied for each analyte, differed from subject to subject, and were inconsistent during the entire period of the experiment. These discrepancies are primarily attributed to variations in the sweat gland secretory rate, which is the major operational factor in the sweat secretion process.
INNOVATION
Researchers at UCLA have developed a novel method to monitor sweat rate in-situ to achieve a normalized measure of the target biomarkers. The sweat rate information allows for characterizing and decoupling the confounding effect of the influential secretion parameters in the transport of the target biomarkers into sweat. The sweat rate information is also useful measure of hydration status and temperature and oxygen regulation. Normalization methodology used in this method helps mitigating the dependency of the sweat readings on secretion parameters. This sweat rate monitoring method can be incorporated into wearable device, or it can be integrated into existing consumer electronic devices to provide valuable physiological insight.
POTENTIAL APPLICATIONS
ADVANTAGES
STATE OF DEVELOPMENT
A device prototype is available.