A wearable IoT aldehyde sensor for pediatric asthma research and management

Abstract

Mechanistic studies and personalized managements of pediatric asthma require objective measures of environmental exposure metrics correlated with patient’s physiological responses. Here we report a cloud-based wearable IoT sensor system which can measure an asthma patient’s exposure to aldehydes, a known class of airway irritants, in real-life settings. The wrist-watch shaped sensor can measure formaldehyde levels in air from 30ppb to 10ppm using fuel cell technology, and continuously operate over 7 days without recharging. The sensor wirelessly uploads data to an Android smartphone via Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). The smartphone also functions as a gateway to a cloud-based informatics system which handles sensor data storage, management and analytics. Potential applications of this IoT sensor system include epidemiological studies of asthma development and exacerbations, personalized asthma management and environmental monitoring.