With rapidly inflating healthcare costs, a limited supply of physicians and an alarming surge in lifestyle diseases, radical changes must be made to improve preventative medicine and ensure a sustainable healthcare system. A compelling solution is to equip the population with wearable health monitors to continuously record representative and actionable physiological data. Herein, we present a preliminary design and evaluation of a biochemical sensor node enabled by a substrate comprised of a nanocellulose thin-film that conforms to the skin and carries a printed sensor element. The nanocellulose layer ensures conformal and biocompatible contact with the skin, while a printed layer provides a high surface-area electrode. While the recognition/transduction element can be exchanged for many different sensing motifs, we utilize the general structure of an electrochemical glucose sensor.

Date Published: 13 May 2016
PDF: 6 pages
Proc. SPIE 9863, Smart Biomedical and Physiological Sensor Technology XIII, 98630Q (13 May 2016); doi: 10.1117/12.2226039

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9863:
Smart Biomedical and Physiological Sensor Technology XIII
Brian M. Cullum; Douglas Kiehl; Eric S. McLamore, Editor(s)