Wearable smart mask monitors COPD

Cross section of the EBCare wearable mask for monitoring respiratory conditions
Cross section of the EBCare wearable mask.
Caltech/Wei Gao and Wenzheng Heng

A wearable smart mask being developed by researchers at the California Institute of Technology could change the way patients with COPD, asthma and other lung conditions are monitored.

Called EBCare by the researchers in a study published in Science, the mask captures exhaled breath condensate (EBC) and offers a promising way to monitor and analyze patient data at an affordable cost.Head shot of Wei Gao, PhDWei Gao, PhDCaltech

Human breath contains molecular markers — including volatile organic compounds and inorganic substances to cytokines and pathogens — that are exhaled as gases, aerosols or droplets. Analyzing these breath biomarkers in real time could improve the diagnoses, monitoring and management of respiratory conditions, but the researchers found that current tools for doing so don’t quite measure up.

That’s why they came up with the EBCare mask. While most traditional bulky devices require external refrigeration to condense breath vapor, EBCare uses tandem passive cooling technologies that integrate hydrogel evaporative cooling, metamaterial radiative cooling and a device framework with high thermal conductivity.

The device enables continuous monitoring through a microfluidic design that mimics the capillary action found in plants and uses a hydrophilic inner surface to direct EBC to a sensing reservoir. Once that process is complete, the EBC is transferred to the outer layer of the mask, where it acts as a continuous water source for supporting the hydrogel evaporative cooling.

Wei Gao, PhD, professor of medical engineering at Caltech and one of the chief architects of the mask’s design, said in a Caltech news release that rather than measure physical changes like temperature, humidity or rate of breathing, the EBCare mask can analyze the chemicals in a patient’s breath in real time.

“Monitoring a patient’s breath is something that is routinely done to assess asthma and other respiratory conditions. However, this has required the patient to visit a clinic for sample collection, followed by a waiting period for lab results,” he said. “Since COVID-19, people are wearing masks more. We can leverage this increased mask use for remote personalized monitoring to get real-time feedback about our own health in our home or office. For instance, we could use this information to assess how well a medical treatment may be working.”

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