A team of ingenuitive researchers introduced a novel method for tracking skin barrier health. Their wearable skin breathing sensor can track critical aspects of your epidermis, providing real-time data to healthcare professionals.
As such, it’s seen by some as the future of non-invasive skin barrier function testing. Here’s how this device could open the door to a deeper understanding of the vital role your skin plays in your health.
What Is the Skin Barrier and Why Does It Matter?
Your epidermis is the biggest organ on your body. It’s made up of different components, including varying proteins and fats. Notably, the cells are tightly packed, allowing oxygen and other gases to escape but water to remain trapped.
This capability allows your body to remain hydrated in changing environments. Additionally, your skin acts as the first line of defense against UV light radiation, pollutants, microbes, irritants, toxins, and allergens.
How Damaged Skin Reveals Your Health Status
Monitoring your skin health is a way in which healthcare professionals can gain valuable insight into your overall bodily functions. These systems can be set up to monitor the healing of wounds, emerging skin infections, hydration levels, or the presence and composition of chemicals. These skin monitoring techniques can help professionals determine if your skin barrier is compromised.
Risks of Dry Skin and Transepidermal Water Loss
When your skin has too little moisture, it can lead to serious medical complications, including dehydration. Dry skin is often sensitive to the touch and easily cracked or damaged. These cracks act like open wounds that can become infected. Notably, preventing transepidermal water loss is the best way to avoid common skin ailments like eczema and psoriasis.
Why Excess Moisture Can Harm Skin Healing
Conversely, your body doesn’t want too much hydration. Whenever you have raised levels of water vapor, CO2, and VOCs, it can result in bacteria taking hold. Even if healthcare professionals clear these bacteria before they become a major issue, their presence can still delay the healing process considerably.
Current Methods for Monitoring Skin Barrier Function
There are a few popular methods for tracking your skin health currently. The most advanced method relies on a hydration probe. This probe gets run across your skin, where it takes in vital data like the changes in the emission of water vapor and gases from the skin.
Limitations of Contact-Based Skin Sensors
There are several problems with the current method of tracking skin breathing health. For one, these large machines are very expensive and are designed to be used only by medical professionals.
This approach limits the capability to track your skin’s health to healthcare professionals. In reality, this capability should be available to anyone interested in remaining healthy,
Additionally, the current methods require a probe to run over the patient’s skin. While this approach may work for relatively healthy or not seriously damaged areas, it’s counterproductive when speaking of highly damaged and sensitive areas of skin.
For example, you don’t want to run a probe over an open burn to determine the skin’s health, as it could result in further damage and, at the very least, irritation. A better solution would be to enable experts to assess the delicate skin-like wounds, ulcers, or abrasions without any direct physical contact.
Why Older Wearable Skin Sensors Fall Short
There has been a recent push to create skin health-registered wearables. This approach could provide real-time data and allow for 24/7 tracking when necessary. However, these devices have all encountered the same problem: a lack of precision due to outside interference from the environment. It’s too difficult to isolate the skin data from the environment without capturing unnecessary data in the process.
All skin breathing devices to date have relied on direct contact for their optical, fluidic, thermal, or mechanical sensor interfaces. These approaches all had the same issue in that they needed to directly contact the patient to utilize their sensors properly. However, it appears that a team of engineers may have solved many of these issues with their latest wearable.
New Study: Non-Contact Skin Sensor Breakthrough
The study ”A non-contact wearable device for monitoring epidermal molecular flux,”1 published in the journal Nature, demonstrates the world’s first wearable device that can accurately measure gases emitted from and absorbed by your skin. This programmable device is different from its predecessors in that it utilizes an enclosed chamber that hovers adjacent to the skin’s surface.
How the Skin Breathing Wearable Works
The proprietary wearable was designed to be small and effective. It measures 2cm in length and 1.5cm in width. The design features a raised chamber that has a variety of sensors, a circuit board, and a rechargeable battery. The separated chamber sits above the skin’s surface, allowing for some unique capabilities.
Source – John Rogers
The wearable skin breathing device utilizes an automated bistable valve to determine the outside environment’s composition. The valve is set up to close quickly, allowing it to trap gases in the chamber. Advanced wireless sensors then analyze this gas and how it changes over a few minutes.
The sensors can register vapourized molecular substances that pass out of or into the skin because it utilizes the chamber as a microclimate. Any changes to this mini environment can be easily tracked and registered in real time. This approach provides measurable data regarding the condition and health of a patient’s skin.
Touch-Free Skin Monitoring for Sensitive Areas
At the core of this design is the no-touch chamber. The chamber is air-tight and packed with sensors that register key data points of your skin. This compartment allows engineers to gather crucial data from sensitive and damaged areas of skin without irritating the surface or damaging the delicate tissue.
Overcoming Environmental Interference in Skin Sensors
This system was able to avoid the interference that other systems in the past encountered because they were able to vary access to the outside environment. The bistable valve design allows engineers to account for both the surrounding environment and natural patterns of flux.
Bluetooth Connectivity for Remote Skin Monitoring
Interestingly, the team integrated a Bluetooth connection into the wearable. This maneuver allows their device to be monitored and controlled by a smartphone or tablet. Additionally, it makes real-time monitoring a possibility. This capability will improve vital healthcare tasks such as determining if a wound is infected or not.
This task used to require several tests that could irritate the damaged skin. The wearable provides a better solution that offers more trackability and affordability. As such, many see this development as a way to improve diagnosis and care in the coming years.
How Researchers Tested the Skin Breathing Wearable
Engineers test their wearable on a variety of subjects, ranging from mice to humans. They conducted tests in different environments as well to determine the accuracy of their wearable in alternative conditions. They also had some diabetic patients, as this technology is seen as an important way for those suffering from this ailment to prevent further injuries.
Key Findings from Skin Monitoring Trials
Notably, the researchers made some interesting discoveries utilizing their new device. For one, they determined that it exceeded in measuring the flux of water vapour, volatile organic compounds, and carbon dioxide from various locations on the body.
The team specifically tested the device on some patients with infected wounds. This move allowed them to gain vital insight into the way your skin breathes when in these conditions. They noted that they registered the data without ever having to touch or damage the tissue.
Benefits of the Skin Breathing Sensor Technology
There are many benefits that this technology brings to the market. For one, the wearable is designed to be inexpensive and accessible to the masses. As such, it could one day empower individuals to take control of their own skin health at home. Additionally, it will open the door to more data farming regarding various skin conditions and overall health.
Small Size, Big Impact: Compact Wearable Design
The small form factor for the skin-breathing wearable means that it can be worn all day comfortably. Wearable comfort is as important as their capabilities because studies have shown people won’t use the devices if they are too cumbersome, uncomfortable, or distracting. For example, you should be able to sleep when wearing the skin-breathing wearable.
Real-Time Skin Health Monitoring from Anywhere
Remote monitoring is another major benefit of this device. It can be set up to communicate with specialists and experts from anywhere in the world. By providing real-time data to these professionals, they can easily measure key data points such as transepidermal water loss or hazardous pollutants.
Customizable Monitoring for Personalized Skin Care
Another cool benefit of the skin-breathing wearable is its programmability. Engineers have developed the device to be very flexible in terms of how it operates and when. You can set it up to measure specific gases over specific periods, providing researchers with more control.
Reducing Unnecessary Antibiotic Use with Better Data
Healthcare professionals see this device as a way to help reduce overmedication. Over the last decades, antibiotic usage has soared. Unfortunately, this over-prescription epidemic has led to bacteria and other ailments becoming immune to these options. This system could help prevent antibiotic resistance in the future by enabling more precise healthcare.
Real-World Applications of Skin Breathing Tech
There are many real-world applications for skin-breathing wearable tech. These devices are compact and can be worn for extended periods without causing discomfort. As such, they serve a vital role in protecting the wearer from hazardous chemicals and in keeping track of their healing. Here are the top applications for this tech.
Enhancing Workplace Safety with Wearable Sensors
The skin-breathing wearable could help revolutionize personal safety. This device can be set up to register exact exposure from the wearable. It could even have alarm settings that alert the wearer when their absorption level gets dangerous.
Additionally, they could be set up to work as a network with other wearables, providing the manufacturer with real-time statistics on their working conditions and employee health. This approach should lower costs and improve safety standards considerably.
Transforming Wound Care and Chronic Skin Conditions
The obvious use case for this device is in the healthcare market. This unit could help patients track and receive treatment. Also, the no-touch design is ideal for use on newborn babies, the elderly, patients with diabetes, and others suffering from skin ailments.
In the future, this evidence could be set up to monitor your healing process. They will allow your caretakers to prescribe antibiotics at the first sign of infection. Additionally, they will help medical engineers create better transdermal drug delivery systems.
Improving Product Testing for Skin Creams and Lotions
This device would be a great tool for any company seeking to create some sort of cream, ointment, or rub. For example, they could register the effects and absorption rate of a bug repellent or sunscreen with extreme accuracy.
Who Developed the Skin Breathing Wearable?
The skin breathing wearables study was led by Northwestern University researchers. The paper lists Jaeho Shin, Joseph Woojin Song, Matthew Thomas Flavin, Seunghee Cho, and Shupeng Li as co-authors alongside several other beginners from various schools.
The team received financial and material support from the Querrey-Simpson Institute for Bioelectronics and the Center for Advanced Regenerative Engineering (CARE) at Northwestern University, the Center for Advanced Regenerative Engineering, and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.
Investing in the HealthTech and BioTech Sectors
Several firms in these sectors continue to drive innovation. These companies have taken advanced technologies like wearables, AI, and other groundbreaking strategies to create a new level of patient care capabilities. Here’s one company leading the charge.
Boston Scientific (BSX +0.54%) entered the market in 1979 and is based in Massachusetts. The company’s founders, John Abele and Peter Nicholas, wanted to create advanced biotech products that could help to save lives. They have achieved their goals and much more since their launch.
Boston Scientific has created some of the most innovative life-saving technologies in recent times. The company is best known for its drug-eluting stent, which is used to open clogged arteries called the Taxus Stent. This life-saving product has helped thousands live a better life. Another innovative product is EMBLEM, the company’s minimally invasive implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD).
Boston Scientific Corporation (BSX +0.54%)
These developments have helped Boston Scientific secure a top spot in the medical biotech sector. The company listed $16,75B revenue in 2024. It currently controls $39,39B in assets and is seen as a “Buy” by many analysts due to its positioning and continued drive to create hi-tech alternatives.
Latest on Boston Scientific
Skin Breathing Wearable – Staying Healthy is Personal
You have to commend this team on their goal to one day make monitoring your skin health as easy as pressing play on your smart watch. Their skin breathing device is compact, durable, and easy to use. All of these factors, plus the device’s additional applications, mean that the skin breathing wearable could be a game changer in the coming years.
Learn about other cool Biotech now.
Studies Referenced:
1. Shin, J., Song, J.W., Flavin, M.T. et al. A non-contact wearable device for monitoring epidermal molecular flux. Nature 640, 375–383 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-08825-2