Breathalyzers aren’t new, although they have evolved to the point where you could easily strap one onto your phone for a mobile portable version. However what if you wanted to measure your blood alcohol levels throughout the day for some kind of medical procedure or monitoring? Obviously blowing into the device is inefficient, and soon it looks like we won’t have to.
During the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Wearable Biosensor Challenge, a company by the name of BACtrack (who has created breathalyzers) created a wearable called the Skyn. This is basically like a wearable you wear around your wrist and through skin contact, it will be able to measure your blood alcohol content. In fact the device proved so useful that it actually won the $200,000 prize money for having the best design.
Now measuring alcohol levels over skin contact isn’t as fast compared to a breathalyzer, but because it can be worn, it will monitor the wearer continuously every 10 seconds. Plus it is relatively unobtrusive meaning that you can wear it at a bar and no one would know that you’re trying to watch how much you drink.
However like we said, it does take a while since it will take about 45 minutes for the alcohol to pass through your system and exit via sweat, so don’t think just because it reads normal after taking 5 shots of whisky that you’re good to drive! Unfortunately Skyn has yet to be submitted to the FDA for marketing approval, so don’t expect to see these available commercially just yet.
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