Can A Mask Detect Respiratory Health?
It is generally accepted that your wearable can help you with health concerns. And there have been instances of a smart watch alerting a wearer to an abnormal heart beat that lead to life-saving procedures.
Well now professor of medical engineering at Caltech, Wei Gao, has developed a prototype for a smart mask that can monitor respiratory health.
It can check for a range of conditions including asthma and COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), and post-COVID-19 infections.
It does this by monitoring physical changes such as temperature, humidity, or rate of breathing.
To test the masks, the breath of patients with asthma or COPD were monitored for nitrite, a biomarker for inflammation in both conditions. The results showed that the masks accurately detected the biomarker, indicting inflammation in the patients' airways.
"These first studies are a proof of concept," says Gao,in an article. "We want to expand this technology to incorporate different markers related to various health conditions. This is a foundation for creating a mask that functions as a versatile general health–monitoring platform."