A Customized Smart Medical Mask For Healthcare Personnel

Abstract

A medical mask is one of the vital Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) used by Healthcare Personnel (HCP) to protect themselves, patients, and others while providing their essential services to the public. HCPs all around the world are fighting on the frontlines of COVID-19. While they are saving people's lives from Coronavirus, it is also critical to monitor the HCPs' health conditions continuously. In this study, we propose a framework to develop a customized smart medical mask system to monitor the HCP's temperature and strain on the face. Aerosol Jet Printing (AJP) technology is applied to develop the mask that embeds 3D printed sensors with wireless function. The proposed design process utilizes a 3D scanned picture of an individual face, then analyzing its geometrical attributes to determine the adjusted places for the sensors on the mask and optimize the design paramenters of the sensors. The two types of sensors, temperature, and strain are fabricated using the AJP technology. The temperature monitoring is to detect respiratory breathing fever and irregular, which is one of the symptoms of respiratory diseases. And strain monitoring is for alarming possible face irritation and bruising caused by tight sealing of masks. The sensing data is transmitted to the cloud for real-time monitoring purposes. This paper showcases the customized yet affordable additive manufacturing built on the Internet of Things technology for a personalized healthcare application to alarm workload and body condition of HCP.