Researchers develop wearable device to alert users of heart trouble

Researchers have developed a first-of-its-kind medical device capable of quickly alerting a person if they are having heart trouble or if it was time to apply some skin cream, IANS reported.

The five centimetre square small device is placed directly on the skin and worn round-the-clock on the wrist for monitoring health. The technology uses thousands of tiny liquid crystals on a flexible substrate to sense heat and when the device changes colour, the wearer knows something had gone wrong.

According to Yonggang Huang, one of the senior researchers from Northwestern University, their device was mechanically invisible, ultra-thin and comfortable, much like skin itself.

The device comprises an array of up to 3,600 liquid crystals, each half a millimetre square – laid out on a thin, soft and stretchable substrate.

The technology uses the temperature changes at the skin's surface to determine blood flow rate, which was of direct relevance to cardio-vascular health, and skin hydration levels (when the skin is dehydrated, the thermal conductivity property changes).

When a crystal senses temperature change, its colour undergoes change with the dense array providing a snapshot of temperature distribution across the area of the device.

An algorithm translates the temperature data into an accurate health report, all in under 30 seconds.

The paper has been published in Nature Communications.