Using sweat instead of blood for monitoring chemical biomarker concentrations of hospitalised patients offers several advantages for both the patients and healthcare workers. Unlike blood, sweat can be noninvasively and continuously sampled without direct involvement of a professional, and sweat contains a rich composition of biomarkers. However, patients in resting state have extremely low sweat rates and they produce correspondingly small sweat volumes, which makes sweat sensing of hospitalised patients highly challenging. We propose a unique solution that enables the use of sweat as a viable biofluid for noninvasive health monitoring, by actively transporting the sweat in a discretised manner. Our device uses electrowetting-on-dielectrics (EWOD) to create and move sweat droplets with a volume of around 1 nanolitre from a sweat gland to sensors integrated in the device. We present the first wearable device with integrated EWOD, and we show that it can collect and transport sweat on-body, while measuring sweat rate, under conditions typical for individuals at rest.

中文翻译：

---

使用汗液传感进行无创健康监测的离散微流体


使用汗液代替血液来监测住院患者的化学生物标志物浓度，为患者和医护人员提供了几个优势。与血液不同，汗液可以在没有专业人员直接参与的情况下进行无创连续采样，并且汗液含有丰富的生物标志物成分。然而，处于静息状态的患者出汗率极低，并且他们产生的汗液量相应较小，这使得住院患者的汗液感应极具挑战性。我们提出了一种独特的解决方案，通过以离散的方式主动运输汗液，使汗液成为无创健康监测的可行生物流体。我们的设备使用电介质润湿 （EWOD） 来产生体积约为 1 纳升的汗滴，并将其从汗腺移动到设备中集成的传感器。我们推出了第一款集成了 EWOD 的可穿戴设备，我们展示了它可以在个人休息的典型条件下收集和运输身上的汗液，同时测量汗液率。