New wearable system ‘could help predict and prevent asthma attacks’

A new integrated, wearable system has been developed by North Carolina State University to aid the monitoring and management of asthma.

The Health and Environmental Tracker system is composed of a suite of sensor devices to assess a user's environment, heart rate and other physical attributes, with the goal of predicting and preventing asthma attacks.

It makes use of patch attached to the chest that incorporates sensors to track movement, heart rate, respiratory rate, the amount of oxygen in the blood, skin impedance and wheezing in the lungs.

Users will also wear a wristband focuses to monitor volatile organic compounds and ozone in the air, as well as ambient humidity and temperature. The system's one non-wearable component is a spirometer, which patients breathe into to measure lung function.

The system has been tested in the lab and on a limited number of human subjects for a proof of concept demonstration. The team plans to scale this up to a larger subject population over the summer.

Alper Bozkurt, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at North Carolina State University, said: "Our goal was to design a wearable system that could track the wellness of the subjects and in particular provide the infrastructure to predict asthma attacks, so that the users could take steps to prevent them by changing their activities or environment."