More comfortable and sustainable wearable sensor patches for greater patient comfort
Current trends are moving the industry in the direction of ever-greater patch functionality, paired with improved comfort and ongoing miniaturization. This also requires smart patches to become more sustainable and long-lasting in use.
By providing innovative raw materials, Covestro helped co-develop wearable sensor patches together with accensors that are not only more comfortable, but also more sustainable.
The idea was to create a reusable, lightweight, flexible and more comfortable wearable patch for patients. At the same time, it should be a highly sophisticated medical device with greater functionality for easy monitoring and diagnoses processes. The result is a clever system featuring adhesives and foams made from Baymedix® raw materials as well as Platilon® thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) films.
The patch features two elements: The Disposable Patch, including sensors that are applied to the skin with a skin adhesive and used only once, and a ReUse Patch, which houses all the valuable electronics.
Special Platilon® films and foams made from Baymedix® are used to embed various monitoring sensors, a rechargeable battery and the transmission unit into the patch, enabling a high level of wearing comfort. With the accensors foil sensor technology it is possible to record a wide variety of vital signs, e.g. pulse, pH and temperature via the skin.
The ReUse Patch can also be used to measure environmental parameters such as movement, brightness and pressure. An inward-facing camera can be integrated and there are various options for wireless data transmission, such as Bluetooth LE, NFC, WiFi, etc. The repeated use of the ReUse Patch ensures effective resource conservation.
Skin-friendliness is heart and center of the wearable skin patch: The ideal skin adhesive guarantees both optimal adhesion combined with low trauma caused to the skin once removed by the patient.
First evaluation models have been produced. Their next step is to find a skin adhesive that guarantees perfect adhesion properties while being skin-friendly. The patch is supposed to withstand everyday activities and to allow to be removed and replaced gently and painlessly after a few days. A complete demonstrator of the smart patch is within reach. Look out for updates in the near future.
High comfort: The patch is lightweight, breathable and flexible, making it hardly noticeable on the skin.
Ease of use: It is easy to remove and insert the ReUse Patch from/into the Disposable Patch.
Freedom: Wireless monitoring technology means patients can live their life at home.
Flexibility: Medical personnel and patients benefit from remote patient control when it matters most.
Sustainable: The ReUse Patch with the electronics can be used for longer, saving resources.
Interested in creating more sustainable wearable skin patches? Then click here
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The NSW Smart Sensing Network is part of a group of 37 university and industry partners leading the establishment of a new $24 million Australian Research Council (ARC) Research Hub for Connected Sensors for Health. Today, the Hub has been awarded $5 million in funding under the latest round of the Australian government’s ARC Industrial Transformation Research Program (ITRP).
Led by Professor Chun Wang, Head of the School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering at UNSW, the Hub aims to develop, manufacture and export high-tech, cyber-secure IoT sensors to global health markets.
“In addition to the development of new connected sensors and digital analytics, the Hub will also contribute to uplifting our domestic medical technologies and pharmaceuticals sector’s skills in advanced manufacturing of sensors and new equipment, regulatory approval, and product commercialization,” said Professor Wang.
“NSSN has contributed to the success of the Hub by connecting researchers with relevant companies, helping the team to identify industry needs, and guidance in the governance structure of the Hub.”
NSSN founding Co-Director Professor Justin Gooding, who has been directly involved with the Hub as part of the leadership team, congratulated Professor Wang on the success of the ITRP grant and praised Professor Wang’s superb leadership of the project, reports NSSN.
“The Hub will create an opportunity for Australia, and NSW, to become a world leader in the manufacture and commercialization of connected health devices and wearable sensors,” said Professor Gooding.
“The NSSN was integral in the team effort that got this Hub over the line. The success exemplifies the value add that NSSN has in connecting researchers to industry and helping to develop large research initiatives that benefit NSW and Australia,” said Professor Gooding.
NSSN MedTech Theme Leader Ms Jane Evans, who has been working closely with the Hub’s leadership team, said long-term partnerships between universities and industry are vital for the future of technology development.
UNSW Sydney
“The ARC Research Hub for Connected Sensors for Health is an excellent demonstration of researchers, industry and entrepreneurs working together with a focus on genuine and innovative transformation in the healthcare sector,” said Ms Evans.
“Successful innovation relies heavily on the people and a transparent culture; you need people that are allowed to think differently and have come together to form a vision for a better future.
“I would like to congratulate Professor Wang for his thoughtful leadership in steering 30 partners, 7 universities, and 36 Chief Investigators throughout the development process and for being tirelessly humble and grateful to all involved.”
In addition to Professor Chun Wang and Professor Justin Gooding, the Hub’s leadership team includes Professor Madhu Bhaskaran, Professor Kim Delbaere and Professor Nigel Lovell.
UNSW Sydney, Macquarie University, University of Newcastle, RMIT University, Queensland University of Technology, Monash University, and the University of Wollongong.
Industry partner organizations
Roebuck, NeuRa, Nutromics, Santevation, Hunter Medical Research Institute, David Penn Consulting, Prince of Wales Hospital, Minifab (AUST), Sensoria Health, Vlepis, Nthalmic, ANDhealth, Australian Read Cross Lifeblood, Primestone Capital, Australian Advanced Materials, Tiger Pharm, Soft Sense, Sydney Pain Management Centre, Flame Security International, Genesys Electronics Design, Global Edge MedTech Consulting, Glia Diagnostics, Vitalcare, STMicroelectronics, NSW Institute of Sport, and the NSW Smart Sensing Network.
It's a good time to buy a smartwatch from Amazon, which is offering a $30 discount on the Apple Watch Series 3 and a $50 discount on the Samsung Galaxy Watch 3.
Engineers from Stanford University have developed a new calorie burn measurement system that is small, inexpensive and accurate. Also, people can make it themselves. Whereas smartwatches and smartphones tend to be off by about 40 to 80 percent when it comes to counting calories burned during an activity, this system averages 13 percent error.
“We built a compact system that we evaluated with a diverse group of participants to represent the U.S. population and found that it does very well, with about one third the error of smartwatches,” said Patrick Slade, a graduate student in mechanical engineering at Stanford who is lead author of a paper about this work, published in Nature Communications.
A crucial piece of this research was understanding a basic shortcoming of other wearable calorie counters: that they rely on wrist motion or heart rate, even though neither is especially indicative of energy expenditure. (Consider how a cup of coffee can increase heart rate.) The researchers hypothesized that leg motion would be more telling – and their experiments confirmed that idea.
There are laboratory-grade systems that can accurately estimate how much energy a person burns during physical activity, but they involve bulky, uncomfortable equipment and can be expensive. This new wearable system only requires two small sensors on the leg, a battery and a portable microcontroller (a small computer), and costs about $100 to make. The list of components and code for making the system are both available, writes Taylor Kubota in Stanford News.
“This is a big advance because, up till now, it takes two to six minutes and a gas mask to accurately estimate how much energy a person is burning,” said Scott Delp, director of the Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance at Stanford and the James H. Clark Professor in the School of Engineering, who is co-author of the paper. “With Patrick’s new tool, we can estimate how much energy is burned with each step as an Olympic athlete races toward the finish line to get a measure of what is fueling their peak performance. We can also compute the energy spent by a patient recovering from cardiac surgery to better manage their exercise.”
Looking to the legs
Photo credit: Stanford University
How people burn calories is complicated, but the researchers had a hunch that sensors on the legs would be a simple way to gain insight into this process.
The system the researchers designed consists of two small sensors – one on the thigh and one on the shank of one leg – run by a microcontroller on the hip, which could easily be replaced by a smartphone. These sensors are called “inertial measurement units” and measure the acceleration and rotation of the leg as it’s moving. They are purposely lightweight, portable and low cost so that they could be easily integrated in different forms, including clothing, such as smart pants.
To test the system against similar technologies, the researchers had study participants wear it while also wearing two smartwatches and a heart rate monitor. With all of these sensors attached, participants performed a variety of activities, including various speeds of walking, running, biking, stair climbing and transitioning between walking and running. When all of the wearables were compared to the calorie burn measurements captured by a laboratory-grade system, the researchers found that their leg-based system was the most accurate.
By further testing the system on over a dozen participants across a range of ages and weights, the researchers gathered a wealth of data that Slade used to further refine the machine learning model that calculates the calorie burn estimates.
“A lot of the steps that you take every day happen in short bouts of 20 seconds or less,” said Slade, who mentioned doing chores as one example of short-burst activity that often gets overlooked. “Being able to capture these brief activities or dynamic changes between activities is really challenging and no other system can currently do that.”
An open design
Simplicity and affordability were important to this team, as was making the design openly available, because they hope this technology can support people in understanding and looking after their health.
“We’re open-sourcing everything in the hopes that people will take it and run with it and make products that can improve the lives of the public,” said Mykel Kochenderfer, an associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics at Stanford who is a co-author of the paper.
Researchers at Stanford University have invented a manufacturing technique that yields flexible, atomically thin transistors less than 100 nanometers in length – several times smaller than previously possible. The technique is detailed in a paper published June 17 in Nature Electronics.
With the advance, said the researchers, so-called “flextronics” move closer to reality. Flexible electronics promise bendable, shapeable, yet energy-efficient computer circuits that can be worn on or implanted in the human body to perform myriad health-related tasks. What’s more, the coming “internet of things,” in which almost every device in our lives is integrated and interconnected with flexible electronics, should similarly benefit from Flextronics, reports Andrew Myers in Stanford News.
Technical difficulties
Among suitable materials for flexible electronics, two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors have shown promise, but engineering challenge to date has been that forming these almost impossibly thin devices requires a process that is far too heat-intensive for the flexible plastic substrates.
For the solution, Eric Pop, a professor of electrical engineering at Stanford, and Alwin Daus, a postdoctoral scholar in Pop’s lab, who developed the technique, used two steps, starting with a base substrate that is anything but flexible.
Atop a solid slab of silicon coated with glass, Pop and Daus formed an atomically thin film of the 2D semiconductor molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) overlaid with small nano-patterned gold electrodes. Because this step is performed on the conventional silicon substrate, the nanoscale transistor dimensions can be patterned with existing advanced patterning techniques, achieving a resolution otherwise impossible on flexible plastic substrates, the Stanford report said.
The layering technique, known as chemical vapor deposition (CVD), grows a film of MoS2 one layer of atoms at a time. The resulting film is just three atoms thick, but requires temperatures reaching 850 C (over 1500 F) to work. By comparison, the flexible substrate – made of polyimide, a thin plastic – would long ago have lost its shape somewhere around 360 C (680 F), and completely decomposed at higher temperatures.
By first patterning and forming these critical parts on rigid silicon and allowing them to cool, the Stanford researchers can apply the flexible material without damage. With a simple bath in deionized water, the entire device stack peels back, now fully transferred to the flexible polyimide.
Stanford University
After few additional fabrication steps, the results are flexible transistors capable of several times higher performance than any produced before with atomically thin semiconductors. The researchers said that while entire circuits could be built and then transferred to the flexible material, certain complications with subsequent layers make these additional steps easier after transfer.
“In the end, the entire structure is just 5 microns thick, including the flexible polyimide,” said Pop, who is senior author of the paper. “That’s about ten times thinner than a human hair.”
“This downscaling has several benefits,” said Daus, who is first author of the paper. “You can fit more transistors in a given footprint, of course, but you can also have higher currents at lower voltage – high speed with less power consumption.”
Meanwhile, the gold metal contacts dissipate and spread the heat generated by the transistors while in use – heat which might otherwise jeopardize the flexible polyimide.
Promising future
With a prototype and patent application complete, Daus and Pop have moved on to their next challenges of refining the devices. They have built similar transistors using two other atomically thin semiconductors (MoSe2 and WSe2) to demonstrate the broad applicability of the technique.
Meanwhile, Daus said that he is looking into integrating radio circuitry with the devices, which will allow future variations to communicate wirelessly with the outside world – another large leap toward viability for flextronics, particularly those implanted in the human body or integrated deep within other devices connected to the internet of things.
In a paper published in June 2021, researchers at the Imperial College London have explored the future of wearable technologies. The wearable technology industry is expanding rapidly. The most obvious example is the growth of the Apple Watch. First launched in 2015, it sold 31 million units in 2019 alone, 10 million more than the entire Swiss watch industry. Globally, the wearable technology market was valued at $32.63bn in 2019, and is forecast to expand at an annual growth rate of 15.9% to 2027.
With the emergence of fitness monitors, such as Fitbit and smartphone apps, driven by low-cost microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) and optical sensors, wearable wellness monitors have become mainstream.
Up until now, wearable devices have predominantly been used to measure heart activity or patterns of respiration. One example of a widely used wearable device in healthcare is the Holter monitor. Dating back to the 1960s, it measures the electrical activity of the heart, termed an electrocardiogram (ECG), over a longer period of time than the traditional resting ECG that typically collects just a few beats for analysis.
Wearable sensors for animals
Apart from human applications, wearable devices have huge potential in both livestock farming and domestic pets. In animal farming, the lack of an ability to distinguish sick animals from healthy ones has led to mass antibiotic usage or culling, resulting in antimicrobial resistance and economic issues, respectively. High-intensity farming has also contributed to the spread of many pathogens of animal origin to humans, for example, the highly pathogenic avian influenza (bird flu), and may also be associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Wearables in healthcare
Diabetes
A good example of how wearable devices are currently improving medical care is with the treatment of diabetes. Constant monitoring of blood glucose is required to keep levels within a safe range. Conventional methods Conventional methods require a “finger stick test” to obtain a blood sample for analysis, known as self-monitoring of blood glucose (SMBG), reports Imperial College London.
COVID-19 and infectious diseases
Another important potential use for wearable technology is when a patient has an infectious disease and direct contact with healthcare workers is not desirable. In this scenario, rudimentary surrogate measures of health provided by wearables could be useful for the clinician. This has become much more relevant during the COVID-19 pandemic. One example of how wearables have been utilized by healthcare providers during the pandemic is the use of wireless pulse oximeters to detect early deterioration of COVID-19 patients.28 Patients are able to remain at home, monitored by the oximeter, which notifies healthcare providers should the patient require hospitalization.
The next generation of wearables
At Imperial College London, numerous new avenues to bring chemical and biochemical wearables to their full potential are currently being researched. One example includes employing biochemical engineering and optical outputs to design simple medical devices capable of diagnosing and monitoring medical conditions.
Wireless auscultation of dogs
Researchers at Imperial College London have developed a stretchable wearable device made of a polymer composite which can be used for wireless auscultation of dogs. The wearable sensor takes the shape of the body and removes air bubbles among the fur to improve the conduction of signals on the contact surface, allowing the recording of heart sounds.
Wearable chemical and biochemical devices
By utilizing microfluidic channels these patches non-invasively sample minute volumes of sweat released from the skin. Passing analytes over sensing components probes allows for real time readout of biomarkers such as electrolytes.
Microneedle patch
Microneedles penetrate the outer layer of skin to gain access to the interstitial fluid. This minimally invasive technique allows for more in-depth analysis of the body homeostasis. Microneedles act as electrodes for simple electrochemical analysis of biomarker concentrations. These patches are worn in a similar way to a plaster and leave little imprint upon removal making them ideal for point-of-care analysis.
Smart tattoos
An illustration of how smart tattoo technology works. In this example, the tattoo is able to change color depending on the concentration of glucose within the blood. (Illustration courtesy of: Imperial College London)
An interesting technique to monitor analytes is smart tattoos. In normal tattoos, the ink is in contact with analyte solution under the skin. By including pigments that are sensitive to changes in biomarkers (such as pH, glucose, ions and enzymes), the tattoo responds to changes in biomarkers by changing color.
What are the main barriers to progress?
Privacy concerns
As the internet of things becomes more widespread, the public are becoming more conscious of how much of their life is quantified in data, and may feel uncomfortable with sharing large quantities of personal data collected by wearable devices. This issue is also compounded by the suspicion users have about where their data is going. For wearable sensors to reach their full potential, protecting user information is paramount.
An Imperial College London led startup Spyras spun out of the Güder Research Group at Imperial College London. It has developed a technology that analyses breathing patterns using sensors integrated into disposable facemasks. Respiration rate is one of the four vital signs of health, however, it is generally not measured using high-precision instruments. Spyras measures patterns of breathing, and breath biochemistry, which can play an important role in the early detection and monitoring of diseases and inform treatments.38,39 Real-time respiratory monitoring is also expected to play a growing role in the wellness segment in sport, meditation, and sleep.
Flow Bio – Imperial expertise in industry
The flowPATCH is a wearable, non-invasive patch that captures an athlete’s sweat and interprets key bio-markers in real-time, starting with electrolytes and total body fluid loss. This system provides users with personalized recommendations that allows them to improve their performance. Ali Yetisen, from the Department of Chemical Engineering, is the Science Advisor to Flow Bio, the company that developed the flowPATCH.
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Myant, the industry leader in Textile Computing, has announced that it has secured Health Canada clearance for its biosensing Skiin Underwear. This Class II medical device clearance allows garment wearers to reliably and continuously monitor their ECG data. Additionally, wearers can track other metrics, including heart rate, HRV, core body temperature, with more to come such as sleep and location.
Available in a number of comfortable and accessible form factors, Skiin Underwear family of products (which is currently also pending FDA clearance) will revolutionize Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) and Chronic Care Management (CCM) through passive, continuous connection and data collection. Myant believes Skiin will support patients, their loved ones, and their practitioners in the shift towards more personalized care, especially in vulnerable communities like the aging population, according to a press release.
“Cardiovascular disease remains the number one cause of death in the elderly population in North America,” says Tony Cahine, Myant & Skiin CEO, “with cognitive decline attributed to loneliness on the rise. Though Myant’s vision is vast, we have adopted a laser focus on solving this looming challenge.”
Today’s healthcare system operates on episodic and reactive care (instead of continuous and preventative care), patient self-reporting, and disjointed support from a patient’s care circle.
Skiin
“I believe that Skiin will help patients overcome existing deterrents and barriers to adequate healthcare, helping serve our most marginalized populations by connecting them to care, to their family, friends, care providers, and practitioners,” Comments Myant’s EVP, Ilaria Varoli.
“Today’s healthcare system relies on events and episodic data, patient self-reporting, and disjointed support from a patient’s care circle,” says Chahine. “We believe that without holistic and continuously connected care, our marginalized and vulnerable communities like our aging population will continue to be underserved and at risk of lower efficacy in medication and rehabilitation program adherence.”
Skiin will be commercially available to the general public later this year.
About Skiin
Skiin is a Myant brand that wants to improve the health and well-being of all people through the digitization of the self. The Skiin layering system fits seamlessly into one’s lifestyle. Its human-centric design allows you to maintain your regular behavior. Skiin’s sensors continuously capture multi-location health and wellness signals. This aggregated data creates your health and wellness Baseline.
Feeling extra sweaty from a summer heat wave? Don’t worry — not all your perspiration has to go to waste. In a paper publishing July 13 in the journal Joule, researchers have developed a new device that harvests energy from the sweat on – of all places – your fingertips. To date, the device is the most efficient on-body energy harvester ever invented, producing 300 millijoules (mJ) of energy per square centimeter without any mechanical energy input during a 10-hour sleep and an additional 30 mJ of energy with a single press of a finger. The authors say the device represents a significant step forward for self-sustainable wearable electronics.
“Normally, you want maximum return on investment in energy. You don’t want to expend a lot of energy through exercise to get only a little energy back,” says senior author Joseph Wang, a nanoengineering professor at the University of California San Diego. “But here, we wanted to create a device adapted to daily activity that requires almost no energy investment — you can completely forget about the device and go to sleep or do desk work like typing, yet still continue to generate energy. You can call it ‘power from doing nothing.’”
Previous sweat-based energy devices required intense exercise, such as a great deal of running or biking, before the user sweated enough to activate power generation. But the large amount of energy consumed during exercise can easily cancel out the energy produced, often resulting in energy return on investment of less than 1%, reports Cell Press.
In contrast, this device falls into what the authors call the “holy grail” category of energy harvesters. Instead of relying on external, irregular sources like sunlight or movement, all it needs is finger contact to collect more than 300 mJ of energy during sleep — which the authors say is enough to power some small wearable electronics. Since no movement is needed, the ratio between harvested energy and invested energy is essentially infinite.
It may seem odd to choose fingertips as the source of this sweat over, say, the underarms, but in fact, fingertips have the highest concentration of sweat glands compared to anywhere else on the body.
“Generating more sweat at the fingers probably evolved to help us better grip things,” says first co-author Lu Yin, a nanoengineering PhD student working in Wang’s lab. “Sweat rates on the finger can reach as high as a few microliters per square centimeter per minute. This is significant compared to other locations on the body, where sweat rates are maybe two or three orders of magnitude smaller.”
The device the researchers developed in this study is a type of energy harvester called a biofuel cell (BFC) and is powered by lactate, a dissolved compound in sweat. From the outside, it looks like a simple piece of foam connected to a circuit with electrodes, all of which is attached to the pad of a finger. The foam is made out of carbon nanotube material, and the device also contains a hydrogel that helps maximize sweat absorption.
Researchers used the new device to power a lab-made electronic system like the one in the picture which senses and displays a person’s Vitamin C levels. (Photo credit: UC San Diego, JacobsSchoolNews)
“The size of the device is about 1 centimeter squared. Its material is flexible as well, so you don’t need to worry about it being too rigid or feeling weird. You can comfortably wear it for an extended period of time,” says Yin.
Within the device, a series of electrochemical reactions occur. The cells are equipped with a bioenzyme on the anode that oxidizes, or removes electrons from, the lactate; the cathode is deposited with a small amount of platinum to catalyze a reduction reaction that takes the electron to turn oxygen into water. Once this happens, electrons flow from the lactate through the circuit, creating a current of electricity. This process occurs spontaneously: as long as there is lactate, no additional energy is needed to kickstart the process.
Separate from but complementary to the BFC, piezoelectric generators — which convert mechanical energy into electricity — are also attached to the device to harvest up to 20% additional energy. Relying on the natural pinching motion of fingers or everyday motions like typing, these generators helped produce additional energy from barely any work: a single press of a finger once per hour required only 0.5 mJ of energy but produced over 30 mJ of energy, a 6,000% return in investment.
The researchers were able to use the device to power effective vitamin C- and sodium-sensing systems, and they are optimistic about improving the device to have even greater abilities in the future, which might make it suitable for health and wellness applications such as glucose meters for people with diabetes. “We want to make this device more tightly integrated in wearable forms, like gloves. We’re also exploring the possibility of enabling wireless connection to mobile devices for extended continuous sensing,” Yin says.
“There’s a lot of exciting potential,” says Wang. “We have ten fingers to play with.”
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South Korean automotive supplier Hyundai Mobis has developed M.Brain, a brainwave detection device that alerts motorists against drowsy driving or sudden health issues. Among other biosignals, brainwave measurement is known to be one of the most advanced and challenged technologies to work with.
According to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), 91,000 police-reported crashes involved drowsy drivers in 2017. These crashes led to an estimated 50,000 people injured and nearly 800 deaths.
M.Brain measures the driver’s condition on a real-time basis by detecting the brainwaves around the ears through earpiece sensors that are worn. The key is the software technology that analyzes and determines the data from the brainwaves. Hyundai Mobis is committed to R&D and has even adopted machine learning to interpret the brainwave signals, according to a press release.
M.Brain can also be interworked with a smartphone app and provide notification that the driver is losing attention. The accident prevention technology also provides alerts for different sensory organs, such as sight (LEDs around the driver’s seat), touch (vibrating seat), hearing (headrest speaker), etc.
Hyundai Mobis plans to apply various bio-healthcare technologies to public transportation with a view to contributing to public safety. M. Brain will test- apply in Gyeonggi-do’s public buses first.
Samuele Errico Piccarini, Unsplash
The global in-vehicle healthcare market has now taken its first step. Heartbeat measurements or eye tracking technologies are introduced. Meanwhile, brainwave-based technology shows infinite potential for development as it is capable of measuring massive amounts of data, which is why Hyundai Mobis’ M.Brain is considered an innovative technology.
Hyundai Mobis is showing progress in developing autonomous driving healthcare technology using biosignals. At the CES in 2018, the company presented DDREM (Departed Driver Rescue & Exit Maneuver), which works to prevent accidents that occur as a result of drowsy driving. Hyundai Mobis then succeeded in developing the eye tracking DSW (Driver State Warning) system in 2019, and ROA (Rear Occupant Alert) system to detect infants in the backseat using radar last year.
Hyundai Mobis is the 7th largest leading automotive supplier. Founded in 1977 and headquartered in Seoul, Korea, Hyundai Mobis also develops sensors, sensor fusion in controllers and software design capabilities in safety control. Mobis currently has more than 30,000 employees and has been manufacturing in more than 30 regions in 10 countries. In addition to its R&D headquarters in Korea, Mobis has 4 technology centers in Germany, China, India and the United States.
Google has released a list of smartwatches that will receive an update to the new Wear platform in the future, but it's short, and the wait will be long.
Researchers at Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science have developed a new robotic neck brace that may help doctors analyze the impact of cancer treatments on the neck mobility of patients and guide their recovery.
Head and neck cancer was the seventh most common cancer worldwide in 2018, with 890,000 new cases and 450,000 deaths, accounting for 3% of all cancers and more than 1.5% of all cancer deaths in the United States. Such cancer can spread to lymph nodes in the neck, as well as other organs in the body. Surgically removing lymph nodes in the neck can help doctors investigate the risk of spread, but may result in pain and stiffness in the shoulders and neck for years afterward.
Identifying which patients may have issues with neck movement “can be difficult, as the findings are often subtle and challenging to quantify,” said Scott Troob, assistant professor of otolaryngology – head and neck surgery and division chief of facial plastic and reconstructive surgery at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. However, successfully targeting what difficulties they might have with mobility can help patients benefit from targeted physical therapy interventions, he explained.
The current techniques and tools that doctors have to judge the range of motion a patient may have lost in their neck and shoulders are somewhat crude, explained Sunil K. Agrawal, a professor of mechanical engineering and rehabilitative and regenerative medicine and director of the ROAR (Robotics and Rehabilitation) Laboratory at Columbia Engineering. They usually either provide unreliable measurements or require too much time and space to set up for use in routine clinical visits, reports Columbia University.
To develop a more reliable and portable tool to analyze neck mobility, Agrawal and his colleagues drew inspiration from a robotic neck brace they previously developed to analyze head and neck motions in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). In partnership with Troob’s group, they have now designed a new wearable robotic neck brace. Their study appears July 12 in the journal Wearable Technologies.
The new brace was made using 3D-printed materials and inexpensive sensors. The easy-to-wear device was based on the head and neck movements of 10 healthy individuals.
“This is the first study of this kind where a wearable robotic neck brace has been designed to characterize the full head and neck range of motion,” Agrawal said.
Columbia University
In the new study, the researchers used the prototype brace, along with electrical measurements of muscle activity, to compare the neck mobility of five cancer patients before and one month after surgical removal of neck lymph nodes. They found their device could precisely detect changes in patient neck movements during routine clinical visits.
“Use of the sensing neck brace allows a surgeon to screen patients postoperatively for movement difficulty, quantify their degree of impairment, and select patients for physical therapy and rehabilitation,” Troob said.
“Patients consistently identify need for rehabilitation and guided exercises after surgery as an unmet need in their medical care,” Troob said. “This work will lay the foundation for the appropriate identification of patients for intervention. We additionally hope that through using the neck brace, we will be able to objectively quantify their improvement and develop evidence-based rehabilitative programs.”
In the future, the researchers hope to investigate larger groups of patients and use the neck brace to follow patients through physical therapy to develop evidence-based protocols for rehabilitation, Troob said. They also would like to develop similar braces for other surgical sites, such as the forearm, ankle, or knee, he added.
Tracking your sleep with the Apple Watch is easy, thanks to WatchOS 7 -- or you could use your iPhone and a third-party app. Our guide shows you the ropes.
100Plus is a fast-growing remote patient monitoring (RPM) platform. The company’s suite of remote patient monitoring technologies includes Blood Pressure Cuff, Digital Weight Scale, Emergency Watch, and Blood Glucose Monitor. Ava is 100Plus’ AI powered healthcare assistant that is specifically intended for senior patients who may not be tech savvy or as open to new technologies.
Ava healthcare assistant reviews a patient’s demographics, medical history, and biotelemetry to personalize how it communicates to each individual person, reports MedGadget. It uses machine learning to enable patients to interact, ask questions, and receive tailored responses, while following strict security and adherence to patient privacy regulations. The company reports that Ava has already facilitated 660,000 health alerts and three million device readings.
“When we developed Ava, we considered the fact that seniors are not only less tech savvy, but also less trusting of new technologies. Ava is remarkable because it leverages machine learning to personify the staff at a physician practice, providing a truly personal touchpoint. This is important because we know that these patients are more responsive to direct physician advice and the technology comes across as a member of the practice. Ava also works through SMS and doesn’t require an app or internet service,” Ryan Howard, CEO of 100Plus told MedGadget’s Conn Hastings in an interview.
100Plus
Today, 80 percent of U.S. seniors over the age of 65 have at least one chronic disease which accounts for 95 percent of Medicare spending.
In March 2021, 100Plus raised $25M in seed investment, led by Henry Kravis, George Roberts, and other super angel investors. 100Plus is the only remote patient monitoring product to utilize artificial intelligence (AI) and offer an end-to-end solution, including patient outreach, device setup, patient engagement and automated billing. The company has ramped revenue to $5M in annual recurring revenue since its launch in January of 2020 and is poised to continue to build upon this growth.
Tap Strap 2 is a wearable device that allows you to send a text or command to your electronic devices simply by tapping your fingers on any surface. Tap Strap 2 is the first tool ever on the market that gives users the power to rapidly send commands and control media through gestures, for everyday devices.
Tap Strap 2 has dropped to $100 from its MSRP of $199 with 4th of July deal, reports EndGadget.
Tap Strap 2 was designed to enable the wide adoption of new technologies and experiences. You type characters and commands by tapping a combination of fingers on any surface. Tap has accelerometers built into each finger-ring, which register which fingers you are tapping and sending the associated letter, number, symbol, or macro to a paired Bluetooth device.
Tap Strap 2 uses onboard intelligence to automatically know what interaction the user intends. When a user’s hand is horizontal, Tap Strap 2 becomes a keyboard. When the thumb rests on a surface, it seamlessly switches to optical mouse mode. And when the user’s hand is rotated vertically, Tap Strap 2 will switch gears yet again into AirMouse mode.
From tablets through SmartTV’s to AR & VR the Tap Strap 2 allows you to type, mouse & control any environment. Simply tap your fingers on any surface or wave your hands in midair.
Tap
Benefits of using Tap Strap 2
Relieves stress & tension from repetitive typing
Learn to Tap using finger combinations, not key locations
Automatically turn Tap into a mouse by placing down your thumb down on a surface
Easily control PowerPoint presentations
Create loops & other effects in music product apps
Control your favorite video games on Xbox One, PC & Mac
Enhanced iPad Support
While Tap Strap 2 works with any Bluetooth enabled device, it provides enhanced support for iPad, offering iOS relevant functions that are not supported by standard mice, such as horizontal swipes, accessing the home screen and launching the app switcher.
The second-generation Tap Strap 2 is a complete input solution for iPad, enabling users to rapidly input text and precisely navigate without the touchscreen interface. It also opens up Tap to entirely new uses, like improved navigation of Apple TV, Amazon Firestick and other Smart TVs, and gesture-controlled inputs for AR/VR. Tap Strap 2 also extends device accessibility for individuals who have difficulty controlling a touch screen, and greatly improves the experience of using the iPad in professional settings.
The Apple Watch 6 and the Samsung Galaxy Watch 3 are getting major price cuts today at Amazon, and if you want a new smartwatch you need to see these deals.
Physilect, a Finnish pioneer of computer aided remote rehabilitation, is developing a series of exergames that use Movesense sensor as a controller. With the games, Physilect is combating the problems arising from immobility and helps people stay active and have fun at the same time.
Exergames are computer games that are also a form of exercise. Exergames have different targets such as motivating players to exercise, preventing the sedentary behavior related to usual computer games, guiding players to specific exercises for health purposes, or simply to make the games more fun and engaging.
The current pandemic situation has induced a boom of home training solutions that often include gamified elements. New home fitness solutions are bringing large amounts of cyclists daily on their stationary bikes to race against each other in the virtual world or runners to run famous routes on a treadmill with a monitor. With other systems, users are working out in front of a screen and a camera and get cheered up, instructed, and rewarded for good performance by AI based analysis, reports Movesense.
“We have invested a lot of effort in getting to know how to use Movesense in games,” says Arcady Khotin, Physilect Chairman of the Board.
We used the global pandemic time and organized a group of remote game developers around our company and gave them our Android SDK to simplify the connection to the sensor. Now we have several games pending”
There are also some Movesense powered products with exergames elements on the market. Volava launched a fitness boxing kit for home use and Virtual KnockOut is working on a boxing game.
Movesense
On the other side, the pandemic and related lockdowns have reduced the amount of physical activity for a big part of the population. Physilect is developing a series of exergames to combat the problems arising from immobility.
Physilect has just launched the first game of the family, Pottery Fitness. The game simulates a potter’s wheel to train your hands, wrists, and forearms. It uses Movesense sensor data to control the game by measuring player’s hand movements.
Pottery Fitness is not a medical application, but it helps to maintain physical activity for those who lead a sedentary life, work a lot at the computer and may suffer from carpal tunnel syndrome.
The Physilect SDK consists of a set of “listeners” that report to the developer about actions like rotation or direction of movement or time between actions, state of balance, etc. It helps using the usual terms of in-game mechanics applied to the use of the sensor.
Physilect is offering their SDK free of charge to everyone interested in implementing Movesense sensors in their applications.
A new Wear OS update will enable remote app installation from the Play Store on Android phones. Google is also adding a splash of Material You to the platform.
Google and Samsung aren't the only ones wanting to change wearables for the better. Qualcomm has opened a forum to drive innovation and plans a new Wear chip.
Smartwatches make life easier by sending alerts right on your wrist. Many also provide fitness-tracking features, so now is a great time to pick one up for cheap. With so many models available, you can find a deal almost all of the time.
The Apple Watch has surged to prominence in recent years. If you're in the market for an iOS wearable, we've sniffed out the best Apple Watch deals available right now.
Health tech company Philips and IT services provider Cognizant announced a new partnership to develop end-to-end digital health solutions that will enable healthcare organizations and life sciences companies to improve patient care and accelerate clinical trials. The strategic alliance brings together Philips HealthSuite, a cloud-based platform and Cognizant’s digital engineering expertise to deliver and maintain leading-edge digital health solutions at scale, providing advanced connectivity and using big data to create actionable insights.
“Partnering with Cognizant’s experienced digital engineering teams will accelerate the adoption of solutions built on Philips HealthSuite, delivering digital solutions across the healthcare continuum in a secure and compliant manner, and ultimately helping guide better health decisions for patients,” said Shez Partovi, Chief Innovation & Strategy Officer at Royal Philips.
Philips HealthSuite, built on Amazon Web Services, is an integrated, modular set of standards-based capabilities that support the development of digital health propositions. The platform securely stores critical healthcare data and provides both advanced data analytics and AI capabilities, while delivering industry-leading interoperability, connectivity and regulatory compliance. To date, more than 100 types of medical devices have been integrated into HealthSuite, with over 145 billion clinical images securely archived on the cloud platform, Philips said in a news release.
As part of this collaboration, Cognizant will build, deploy, implement, and operate client-specific applications on Philips HealthSuite. These customizable, scalable solutions integrate advanced data analytics, helping to improve both the patient and clinician experience by providing relevant data to the appropriate point-of-care.
Cognizant
With these solutions, healthcare providers can monitor their patients outside traditional clinical settings, and patients can stay more informed of their own well-being. In addition, both biopharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers can quickly gain actionable insights through advanced analytics to make more informed clinical development decisions and rapidly bring new solutions to patients.
“Despite advances, patients and clinicians still face a fragmented technology and data landscape that holds back innovative healthcare services which improve care quality and the human experience,” Mr. Partovi said. “Philips is committed to driving the digital transformation of healthcare. Partnering with Cognizant’s experienced digital engineering teams will accelerate the adoption of solutions built on Philips HealthSuite, delivering digital solutions across the healthcare continuum in a secure and compliant manner, and ultimately helping guide better health decisions for patients.”
For Life Sciences companies, Philips HealthSuite’s compliant and secure medical device connectivity, data integration and analysis will also benefit remote patient monitoring and decentralized clinical trials. This will enable a reduction in paperwork, help researchers reach more diverse trial participants and improve connectivity between investigators and participants – with the goal of improving the quality and speed of therapy development.
“Cognizant and Philips are each dedicated to improving people’s lives through health technology,” said Ursula Morgenstern, President of Global Growth Markets at Cognizant. “This new collaboration will provide critical solutions that help manage the growing amount of health data available, keep patients and providers better connected, and help accelerate life-saving therapies to market, Virtual and digital health solutions are fundamental to improving health awareness and engagement. We are proud to work with Philips, a world leader in healthtech, to support the health and well-being of people everywhere.”
The Tokyo Olympics is set to kick off on July 23. More than 11 thousand athletes representing 206 nations will compete at this world’s biggest sporting event. Each and every athlete will give their best to win the Gold medal. To win at any sporting event, it’s very important to have a winning focus. Studies have shown that meditation improves focus, productivity and overall mental health.
The Indian Olympic Association (IOA) has announced a partnership with Dhyana, the startup behind the smart ring that measures the quality of meditation. The IOA has acquired smart Dhyana rings and Dhyana’s health management services for the entire Indian contingent headed for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and is working together to prioritize mental wellness and improve the focus of the players amidst the ongoing pandemic, reports ANI.
“Developed by Indian badminton legend Pullela Gopichand and Oxford University alumnus and biomedical technology entrepreneur, Bhairav Shankar, the smart Dhyana ring is capable of measuring your ‘mindful minutes’, or the amount of time you are actually focusing while in a meditation session,” read an official statement. It does this by continuously tracking your Heart Rate Variability (HRV), or the gap in between two consecutive heartbeats, which is further broken down into the three fundamentals of every meditation session — the quality of breathing, focus, and relaxation.
Photo credit: Dhyana
Dhyana rings have been used by Pullela Gopichand to help his students achieve their ‘mindfulness goals’ — which range from improving focus, productivity to overall mental health. In 2018, the International Olympic Committee summit in Lausanne was in consensus about ensuring mental wellness in sports. In India, with a rich history of meditation, the IOA has not only recognized the importance of mental wellness, but is drawing from its cultural roots to address it with technology. Dhyana, which is made in India, hence becomes the first official meditation device to be used at the Olympics.
“Research shows us that Dhyana helps provide a measurable and scientific way of tackling stress, increasing focus and building a positive state-of-mind through the power of meditation,” said Bhairav Shankar, Dhyana MD.
Talking about this partnership, Gopichand said: “The Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games is going to be extremely challenging owing to the exceptional circumstances it is being held in. I have always relied on the benefits of meditation throughout my entire career — both as a player and as a coach, and am confident that data-driven meditation with the help of Dhyana will greatly benefit the Indian contingent to prepare better and help them unlock their full potential.”
Founded in 1852, Mount Sinai is one of the oldest and largest teaching hospitals in the United States. The entire Mount Sinai health system has over 7,400 physicians, and 3,815 beds. In New York metropolitan area, the hospital has 8 campuses. Its expertise in population health, along with its service to socioeconomically, demographically and culturally varied populations, means Mount Sinai is uniquely positioned to take on the challenge of delivering high-quality care to underserved people.
However, the hospitals largest ambulatory cancer center is located in three immediately adjacent neighborhoods in Manhattan that represent a dramatic contrast in populations.
“East Harlem is an area of high poverty and is predominantly Hispanic and Black. Central Harlem also has a high poverty rate and is predominantly Black and Hispanic,” said Dr. Cardinale Smith, chief quality officer for cancer at Mount Sinai. “A high proportion of residents in both Harlems live in public housing.
“In contrast, the Upper East Side is one of the wealthiest areas in the country and predominantly white,” she added. “The healthcare disparities in the patients we care for were even more visible during the pandemic.”
Like many healthcare systems at the beginning of the pandemic, Mount Sinai saw a drastic drop in cancer screenings and treatment. By April 2020, Mount Sinai’s ambulatory and inpatient services department saw a 25% decrease in volume. It meant that many vulnerable patients were either not receiving or delaying cancer care, potentially putting their treatment plans off track, reports Healthcare IT News.
To improve virtual care and physician/patient communication, Mount Sinai chose Current Health’s remote patient monitoring solution.
Photo: Mount Sinai
Current Health’s device and platform helped to:
Decrease readmissions by catching health deterioration early
Enable more comprehensive care outside of the cancer center
Prevent potential patient exposure to infection by providing more care virtually
Bridge the digital health divide as telehealth engagement continued to rise
“To get started, patients just need to plug in the Home Hub into an outlet and all other monitoring devices are preconfigured and connected for the patient in the patient’s preferred language,” said Dr. Cardinale Smith.
There are numerous vendors of remote patient monitoring technologies on the health IT market today. But Mount Sinai selected Current Health over other players in the space for several reasons: the small device, which captures several vitals, custom configurability, and ease of setup, Smith noted. The vendor also provided the device, as well as the cellular connectivity needed to make sure patients are continually monitored, she added.
Current Health’s FDA-cleared wearable remote patient monitoring device uses AI to automatically monitor patients to help better determine health trajectory and allow clinicians to intervene earlier.
“The Mount Sinai Health System works with innovative and leading-edge companies like Current to support our commitment to providing world-class patient care. Current’s continuous and proactive monitoring platform has the potential to alert us to patient deterioration faster and give our team data insights they can act on earlier,” said Dr. Scott Lorin, president of Mount Sinai Brooklyn.
