Smart devices, which range from watches to patches and other forms of sensors, can track heart rate, inflammatory markers, and other factors that allow patients to manage their health from their homes. We can now add a new kind of wearable technology to the list: an advanced paper mask that tracks breath.
A smart mask prototype has been developed by Wei Gao, a professor of medical engineering at Caltech, and his colleagues. The mask can be used to monitor various medical conditions, including respiratory diseases like asthma, COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), and post-COVID-19 infections (1^✔ ✔Trusted Source
A smart mask for exhaled breath condensate harvesting and analysis

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How EBCare Smart Mask Monitors Respiratory Health in Real-Time?

This smart mask, called EBCare (EBC stands for “exhaled breath condensate,” an acronym used in this discipline), can evaluate the chemicals in a person’s breath in real-time, unlike other ones that are being developed that detect physical changes like temperature, humidity, or rate of breathing. The mask has the potential to track the levels of nitrite, a molecule that indicates inflammation of the airways, in asthmatic patients.

“Monitoring a patient’s breath is something that is routinely done, for example, to assess asthma and other respiratory conditions. However, this has required the patient to visit a clinic for sample collection, followed by a waiting period for lab results,” says Gao, the lead investigator of a new study describing the mask in the journal Science.
“Since COVID-19, people are wearing masks more. We can leverage this increased mask use for remote personalized monitoring to get real-time feedback about our health in our home or office. For instance, we could use this information to assess how well a medical treatment may be working.”

Features of the EBCare Smart Mask

Gao, who is also a Heritage Medical Research Institute Investigator and Ronald and JoAnne Willens Scholar, has already developed a range of wearable biosensors that analyze human sweat to measure metabolites, nutrients, hormones, and protein levels. In this case, Gao’s goal was to monitor the breath, which came with a new set of challenges.

To selectively analyze the chemicals or molecules in somebody’s breath, it needs to be first cooled and condensed into a liquid. In clinical settings, this cooling step is done separately from the analysis. Moist breath samples are chilled on buckets of ice or bulky refrigerated coolers. Gao’s new mask, in contrast, is self-cooling. The breath is cooled by a passive cooling system that integrates hydrogel evaporative cooling with radiative cooling to effectively chill the breath on face masks.

“The mask represents a new paradigm for respiratory and metabolic disease management and precise medicine because we can easily get breath specimens and analyze the chemical molecules in breath in real-time through daily masks,” says Wenzheng Heng, lead author of the study and a graduate student at Caltech. “The breath condensate contains soluble gases as well as nonvolatile substances in the form of aerosols or droplets, such as metabolic substances, inflammatory indicators, and pathogens.”

Once the breath has been converted into a liquid, a series of capillaries, belonging to a class of devices referred to as bioinspired microfluidics, immediately transports the liquid to sensors for analysis. “We learned from plants how to transport the water,” says Gao. “Plants use capillary forces to draw water upward from the ground.”

The results of the analysis are then transmitted wirelessly to a personal phone, tablet, or computer. “The smart mask can be prepared at a relatively low cost,” says Gao. “It is designed to cost only about $1 in materials.”

Future Prospects of the EBCare Smart Mask

To test the masks, the team performed a set of human studies, primarily focused on patients with asthma or COPD. They specifically monitored the patients’ breath for nitrite, a biomarker for inflammation in both conditions. The results showed that the masks accurately detected the biomarker, indicating inflammation in the patient’s airways.

In another study, the team demonstrated that the masks accurately detected blood alcohol levels in human subjects, suggesting the masks could be used for on-site drinking-and-driving checks or other forms of alcohol-consumption monitoring.

They also looked at how the masks could potentially be used to evaluate blood urea levels in the monitoring and management of kidney disease. As kidney function declines, protein metabolism by-products like urea accumulate in the blood. At the same time, urea increases in saliva, which breaks down into ammonia gas, and this leads to higher ammonium levels in the breath condensate. The new study showed that the smart masks could accurately detect these ammonium levels, closely reflecting urea levels in the blood.

“These first studies are a proof of concept,” says Gao. “We want to expand this technology to incorporate different markers related to various health conditions. This is a foundation for creating a mask that functions as a versatile general health–monitoring platform.” As for the comfort of the masks, participants reported favorable experiences, even those with breathing problems.

“The smart mask platform for EBC harvesting and analysis represents a major advance in the potential to monitor lung health in real-time,” says co-author Harry Rossiter, investigator at the Lundquist Institute for Biomedical Innovation at Harbor-UCLA and professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “That concept, that biosensors for a wide range of compounds may be added in the future, highlights the game-changing potential of the smart mask for health monitoring and diagnostics.”

Reference:

1. A smart mask for exhaled breath condensate harvesting and analysis – (https:www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adn6471)

Source-Eurekalert