Obesity is a lifestyle-related illness that has become a major social problem nationally and worldwide. The significant prevalence of obesity and overweight poses a major social and public health challenge; particularly as obesity is a root cause for increasing the risk of illnesses from hypertension, to diabetes and stroke, and even cancer. Our objective is to transform health and medical practices through non-invasive, personalized, affordable and continuous diagnostics, allowing users to monitor their fat metabolism and control their weight loss, thereby helping manage obesity or metabolic disorders. This objective will be realized by novel engineering approaches and scientific advancements that relate the monitoring of skin gases to metabolic rates and fat burning. This work aims to validate empirically the new concept of skin-based diagnostics via wearable and wireless device prototypes that are non-intrusive (no microneedles) and not dependent on sweat and can be used continuously and without effort. Major innovations with broad applicability to become enabled by this work include chemo- actuating devices, wearable antennas, RF power harvesting, gas-proof packaging technology, physiological models for metabolic rate, and testing skin acetone as a metabolic biomarker. Novel diagnostics that are affordable, non-invasive, non-intrusive, proving real-time assessment of the metabolic state of the individual. A new workforce will be trained in cross-disciplinary practices. Outreach events and interactive games will target education of local community and students interested in continuous health monitoring and weight management. In summary, this project is expected to revolutionize inexpensive, ubiquitous, non-invasive, non-intrusive, medical diagnostics based on skin-gas detection.
This work involves novel engineering approaches (skin-gas sensing, battery-less wearable devices) together with innovations in computer/information science (physiological predictive models) and social cybernetics. At the core of this new wearable monitoring technology sits a novel proposed smart material designed to exhibit reversible actuating behavior when exposed to skin acetone, a chemical known to directly relate to fat metabolism. This material will be integrated with a novel electromagnetic transducer realized on conductive threads to convert shape deformations into voltage changes. Through the integration of circuitry and wireless transmission capabilities all components will be embedded into a wearable skin strip that will be isolated from the environment via advanced water and gas-proof glassy materials. Human subject experiments will be performed to obtain an accurate dynamical relationship between acetone and fat-metabolism and for calibrating and testing the novel monitoring technology. Finally, open source groupware tools harnessing advances in social cybernetics will be employed to process skin acetone measurements from individuals in a group and provide useful feedback on behavioral modifications towards improving health and weight control through the use of social networks. All aspects of the system will be improved iteratively via sample-efficient multi-level optimization algorithms.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
