Project Summary
Heart failure (HF) is a very common, costly and potentially fatal health condition which affects over 40 million
people globally. The role of mHealth technologies in improving the outpatient management of HF is emerging.
However, the majority of the current mHealth based HF monitoring systems, which measure blood pressure,
weight, and electrocardiographic recordings, did not show a reduction in all-cause mortality. Human sweat is
a key body fluid that contains a wealth of analytes, including electrolytes that are closely monitored in HF
patients (e.g., potassium) and key HF biomarkers (e.g., brain natriuretic peptide (BNP)). Thus, sweat could
serve as a perfect candidate for developing mHealth tools toward non-invasive and dynamic HF monitoring.
In this proposal, we aim to develop an integrated wearable sweat sensor patch for non-invasive, personalized,
and dynamic monitoring of heart failure. The proposed wearable sweat sensor platform can perform
autonomous sweat induction through an integrated iontophoresis module, efficient sweat sampling through
microfluidic channels, and continuous analysis of sweat electrolytes (i.e. potassium) as well as other clinically
relevant biomarkers for heart failure (i.e. BNP). The in vivo sensor validation and dynamic correlation study
of serum and sweat electrolytes and biomarkers using the wearable sweat sensor will be performed in healthy
subjects. Further human trials will be implemented to determine whether sweat analysis in patients with HF
can reliably assess electrolyte and biomarker levels, and incorporate a wearable sweat sensor into an
integrated mHealth platform to monitor physiological parameters in chronic HF. Harnessing the strengths of
our team’s interdisciplinary educational and research background, spanning across chemistry, engineering,
and cardiovascular medicine, the following proposal will allow our team to develop a wearable sweat sensor
patch to explore the novel method of monitoring clinically relevant biomarkers in patients with HF. The success
of this project will unify mobile health management, monitoring and feedback into a single wearable platform.
This platform has the potential to not only revolutionize the management of chronic heart failure, but also to
significantly impact the healthcare industry by discovering a meaningful way to incorporate the use of
wearable electronics into a chronic disease model.