Wearable technology fitness trackers may soon look to sweat instead of heart rates

sweat wearable technology fitness tracker

The wearables market is among those that are developing at laser speed, with new advancements regularly occurring.

Over the last few years, it has felt as though the new discoveries in wearable technology are becoming increasingly frequent and, among the latest to truly make some noise, has been a concept that would use sensors to examine sweat in order to produce biofeedback.

The results of a recent study have been published within the Nature science journal describing the potential of sweat.

The researchers from the study determined that there were a range of new potential uses for collecting data by way of wearable technology that could analyze sweat. The research paper detailed the concept of using a flexible sensor in order to use “existing technologies” in order to conduct a sweat analysis. It would technically involve five different sensors built into one unit and that would then be able to transmit the sweat-related data to a smartphone into which a mobile app has been installed.

The researchers in this wearable technology study were from the University of California, Berkeley.

sweat wearable technology fitness trackerElectrical engineer, Ali Javey, from the university and who was involved in the research explained that perspiration is filled with different molecules. He pointed out that these molecules include everything from complex proteins to simple electrically charged ions and even certain diseases. “I think if you could have a pathology lab on your hand, that would be an amazing breakthrough for humanity as a whole,” he said.

The most popular forms of wearables currently place their focus on other types of bio-data, such as heart rate. That said, if sensors were able to take a closer look – right down to the molecular level – it could mean that there may be a great deal more information available to consumers than what these mobile devices currently have to offer.

The paper explains that sweat provides a way to access protein level monitoring and may even make it possible to detect diseases in a real time way that is similar to the way heart rate tracking is being applied in currently available wearable technology devices.

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