Conformal Skin Patch for Dehydration Monitoring in Dementia Patient

Sweat is a natural expiration from the body which possesses the reservoir of physiological biomarkers. With the blooming of wearable electronics and soft bioelectronics, it has opened novel avenues to track the individual’s health. Recently, silver tsunami has become prevalent in most of the developed countries leading to concerns for elderly care. Most elderly people suffer from depreciation of cognitive activity known as Dementia. Due to this, they are unable to recognize the feeling of thirst leading to dehydration of the body. This creates an immediate need to continuously monitor the electrolyte biomarkers in the sweat to detect dehydration. Thus, we developed a novel sweat based conformal skin patch for dehydration monitoring in dementia patients. In this work, we proposed to develop a conformal skin patch for multiplexed detection of sodium ions (Na
⁺
), potassium ions (K
⁺
) and pH of the sweat. The electrochemical sensors are fabricated on flexible polyimide substrate with gold and silver/silver chloride (Ag/AgCl) as working and reference electrode respectively. Ag/AgCl reference electrodes are functionalized with polyvinyl butyral (PVB) to obtain stable reference potential. The fabricated conformal patch is validated for sensitivity and selectivity of detection using bench top set up. Also, PVB functionalized Ag/AgCl reference electrodes are validated for stability and performance against the commercial reference electrodes.