Electronic Skin Health Trackers

You are probably familiar with the activity trackers that many people wear as wristbands to see how many steps they take in a day or how many calories that they burned while exercising according to their heart rate. The future of activity trackers has already arrived, and it comes in the form of electronic skin health trackers. These amazing devices are developed out of thin material that sticks directly to the skin and can be worn throughout the day. The device was just recently developed by two professors from the University of Illinois and Northwestern University. The device is so small that it is completely undetectable when worn under clothing and is capable of sticking to the skin for extended periods of time. 

There are many bodily functions that can be monitored by the electronic skin health tracker. For example, this innovative device can sense health problems, such as detecting various diseases, at a much earlier stage than what many doctors may diagnose. This is because the sensors are interacting directly with the skin at multiple contact points on the body. The data received is analyzed and tracked in real time to get a much more comprehensive picture of what is going on with your body. This data is able to be analyzed by health care professionals to detect early warning signs of many life-threatening diseases. It can also give your doctors a much more accurate picture of what your daily lifestyle choices look like.

Unlike your typical activity tracker that is worn as a wristband, these skin sensors are much closer to your actual system and are able to pick up broader categories of data than simply measuring your heart rate at any given time. The technology for the electronic skin health trackers is still being developed, but the early prototypes of the devices look very promising. Instead of having to rely on patients to account for their daily lifestyle choices, doctors can get a clear glimpse into how a variety of environmental factors are affecting their patients' overall health.

Some doctors think that the next step in the development of electronic skin health trackers is the ability of the patches to dispense medicine directly through the skin at the appropriate time for each patient. This could be very helpful for patients who have a difficult time remembering to take the appropriate amount of medication, such as senior adults who live alone and do not have a constant caregiver. It could help these adults to maintain their independence as well. While this technology is still years away from being solidified, the rapid advancement in health data tracking through the current electronic skin trackers is quite promising. The developers of the electronic skin health trackers are also currently looking into the issue that the date collected by the skin trackers cannot yet be wirelessly transmitted to another device. To make these devices widely available, data will need to be able to be compiled in a more efficient way, such as being able to sync the device to a web-based monitoring service in real time.