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An epidermal patch for the simultaneous monitoring of haemodynamic and metabolic biomarkers

Nature Biomedical Engineering volume 5, pages 737–748 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Monitoring the effects of daily activities on the physiological responses of the body calls for wearable devices that can simultaneously track metabolic and haemodynamic parameters. Here we describe a non-invasive skin-worn device for the simultaneous monitoring of blood pressure and heart rate via ultrasonic transducers and of multiple biomarkers via electrochemical sensors. We optimized the integrated device so that it provides mechanical resiliency and flexibility while conforming to curved skin surfaces, and to ensure reliable sensing of glucose in interstitial fluid and of lactate, caffeine and alcohol in sweat, without crosstalk between the individual sensors. In human volunteers, the device captured physiological effects of food intake and exercise, in particular the production of glucose after food digestion, the consumption of glucose via glycolysis, and increases in blood pressure and heart rate compensating for oxygen depletion and lactate generation. Continuous and simultaneous acoustic and electrochemical sensing via integrated wearable devices should enrich the understanding of the body’s response to daily activities, and could facilitate the early prediction of abnormal physiological changes.

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Fig. 1: Design and mechanism of the stretchable integrated BP–chemical sensing patch.
Fig. 2: Characterization of the multimodal wearable sensor.
Fig. 3: On-body evaluation of the hybrid acoustic–electrochemical sensor.
Fig. 4: On-body evaluation of multiple stimuli.
Fig. 5: Continuous on-body evaluation.

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Data availability

All the data generated and analysed during the study are included in the paper and its Supplementary Information.

Code availability

The LabView code used for processing the transducer raw signals into blood-pressure waveforms is available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4433220.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the UCSD Center of Wearable Sensors (CWS) and National Institutes of Health (grant no. 1R21EB027303-01A1). J.R.S. acknowledges support from CNPq (grant no. 216981/2014-0). E.D.l.p. acknowledges support from a UC MEXUS–CONACYT collaborative fellowship (2017–2022). A.A.K. acknowledges support from the Fulbright Egyptian Scholar Program (grant no. ay2019-2020). T.S.-a. acknowledges the Royal Golden Jubilee PhD scholarship of the Thailand Research Fund. We thank the Kraton Corporation for providing the SEBS samples.

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  1. These authors contributed equally: Juliane R. Sempionatto, Muyang Lin, Lu Yin.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Nanoengineering, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA

    Juliane R. Sempionatto, Muyang Lin, Lu Yin, Ernesto De la paz, Kexin Pei, Thitaporn Sonsa-ard, Andre N. de Loyola Silva, Ahmed A. Khorshed, Fangyu Zhang, Nicholas Tostado, Sheng Xu & Joseph Wang

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  1. Juliane R. Sempionatto
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Contributions

J.R.S., M.L. and L.Y. conceived the original project, designed and performed experiments, analysed data, and participated in the figure design and writing of the manuscript. E.D.l.p. performed experiments, analysed data, and participated in the figure design and writing of the manuscript. K.P. and T.S.-a. performed experiments and analysed data. A.N.d.L.S., A.A.K. and F.Z. performed experiments. N.T. fabricated the devices. J.W. and S.X. conceived the original project, designed the experiments, analysed data, participated in the figure design and manuscript writing, and provided guidance to the project.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Sheng Xu or Joseph Wang.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary methods, figures, references and video captions.

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Supplementary Video 1

Application of hydrogels on the device.

Supplementary Video 2

Artery movement during cycling.

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Sempionatto, J.R., Lin, M., Yin, L. et al. An epidermal patch for the simultaneous monitoring of haemodynamic and metabolic biomarkers. Nat Biomed Eng 5, 737–748 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41551-021-00685-1

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