Wristband wearable monitors health and environment

Engineers have created a smart wristband with a wireless connection to smartphones that they believe will lead to a new wave of personal health and environmental monitoring devices.

The technology, developed at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, could be added to watches and other wearable devices that monitor heart rates and physical activity. The advance is detailed in a study published online in Microsystems & Nanoengineering.

"It's like a Fitbit but has a biosensor that can count particles, so that includes blood cells, bacteria and organic or inorganic particles in the air," said Mehdi Javanmard, senior author of the study and assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the School of Engineering.

"Current wearables can measure only a handful of physical parameters such as heart rate and exercise activity," said Abbas Furniturewalla, study lead author and former undergraduate researcher in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. "The ability for a wearable device to monitor the counts of different cells in our bloodstream would take personal health monitoring to the next level."