By Meritxell Rovira (predoctoral researcher at the Chemical Transducers Group, GTQ; IMB-CNM, CSIC).
During exercise performance, sweating leads to the loss of water and electrolytes due to thermoregulatory action. The monitoring of this electrolyte imbalance would enable personalized diagnosis and would help to prevent pathologies related to dehydration. Several attempts have been reported in the last decade to achieve compact, affordable, and wearable platforms for healthcare and sport activities real-time monitoring.
This work reports the development and evaluation of a wearable patch for monitoring pH, sodium and potassium in sweat during the practice of exercise. The platform includes paper-based microfluidics to collect and drive sweat samples to an array of ion-sensitive field-effect transistor (ISFET) packaged on a patch-like substrate.