455003536315660006638290Insert Name360000Insert Namecentercenter95000950004550035363152500251460 3700030000 44000341947525002514604000070000455003536315690006939915370000455003536315350003520440Technology Rewiew #1

Sweat Sensors

3600028000Technology Rewiew #1

Sweat Sensors

In the day and age that we currently live in people want their information on the spot quickly. They don’t want to go to the blood lab and wait 2 weeks for the doctor to call them back into the office so they can read off their results. They want to know if something is wrong with them the same day. Knowing this information could be a matter of life and death for a person.

New technology that is currently being tested are wearable computing devices that contain sweat sensors. With these wearable sweat sensor devices they can monitor a person PH balance and send signals via Bluetooth and or wireless network to a smartphone, tablet, laptop and other devices. The sweat sensors analyzing the current health of an individual by measuring and monitoring the persons sweat levels. This laboratory named Biotex is “the first generation of a wearable, wireless sweat analysis system was successfully fabricated and tested CITATION Cur12 l 1033 (Curto, Coyle, Byrne, & Angelov,, 2012)” The way the first device worked was a person wears the sensor which comes in a number of forms, one way being a belt that sits on your waist, another way is a sock that your wear on your foot. They also have bracelets and watches that have sweat sensors. There are also implants and tattoos, but the most popular form of the sweat sensor is the patch. This patch absorbs sweat and then analyzes the person’s electrolytes protein, lactate and sodium. Then “The shimmer wireless GSR sensor broadcasts the signal to a smartphone CITATION Jen11 l 1033 (Healey, 2011)” the sensor wirelessly sends the information to a display device so the person can see the results and if they are at risk.

This new wearable technology can be used to detect how much alcohol intake a person has had CITATION Ano14 l 1033 (A novel non-invasive electrochemical biosensing device for in situ determination of the alcohol content in blood by monitoring ethanol in sweat, 2014) It can also detect things like when a person is dehydrated, has muscular fatigue, heat stress, having a fatal seizures, Concussions, or be the first to let the person know that they have hepatitis B or how they should administer stroke treatment.

Image this, you own a NFL football team and your players are wearing sweat sensors that are wirelessly connected to the coach’s tablet. This sensors will be able to let the coach know that one of the players needs to come out and hydrate his self or he is at risk of passing out on the field. This will also let the coach know when the player is at him maximum level so he will know if he will be able to run the ball at a fast speed. “Measuring biochemical parameters can be useful when monitoring athletes under effort, as this can help to improve their performance CITATION Der15 l 1033 (Florea, 2015)”

Currently in theses stages of testing there are not many security layers placed upon the idea of sweat sensors that wirelessly send the analysis. With all the good that it does the sensors do have a bad side of them. If the database that houses the user’s profile is compromised, so is the integrity of the data. There is no non repudiation to say that the data really came from that actually sweat sensor. To help the product out they should add some sort of data encryption to the data. Also it would take a simple wireless jammer to block the signal and that would hurt the availability of the data so there is no way to see what the sensor is actually reporting. Also when dealing with Wireless networks the companies have to be on the lookout for various attacks to the network which include Collision, Exhaustion of the network, spoofing and eavesdropping. CITATION Her11 l 1033 (Hero Modares, 2011) The web interface has user name and password to add an authentication function to the technology. But I am sure that it could be broken by using simple brute force to crack the password. A way that the company could combat that situation is inforce using complex passwords and maybe have the users use special characters and numbers. This will make it harder for a hacker to log in as an un-authorized person.

The information that the sweat sensors provide could be dangerous to the privacy of the person using the sensor. This information can be stolen by criminals or hackers and sold. This information could be damaging to a person if it becomes public knowledge. Also if this technology was to be used in professional sporting the other team could hire someone to hack into the other teams results and see where the team is weakest at and target that area and also they could change the data to reflect false information. Also hackers can steal this information and give it out to people who places bets and this would give them an inside look at what is physically going on with a player which violates players rights.

Wearable sweats sensors are great and can save lives, prevent illness and injury. Sweat sensors can help a person get the max out of their work out and make them feel safe at the same time. Sweat sensors read what the body is telling a person. CITATION Nia12 l 1033 (Moyna, 2012)I am sure when this actually rolls out to the market the companies would have added simple fixes to prevent the data from being stolen, because people’s privacy is a real big issues and will not get the approval of the American consumer in today’s market.

References

BIBLIOGRAPHY A novel non-invasive electrochemical biosensing device for in situ determination of the alcohol content in blood by monitoring ethanol in sweat. (2014, Jan 2). Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com.ezproxy.umuc.edu/science/article/pii/S0003267013011914

Curto, V., Coyle, S., Byrne, R., & Angelov,, N. (2012, Dec.). Concept and development of an autonomous wearable micro-fluidic platform for real time pH sweat analysis. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com.ezproxy.umuc.edu/science/article/pii/S0925400512001244

Florea, D. D. (2015, Jan). Advances in wearable chemical sensor design for monitoring biological fluids. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com.ezproxy.umuc.edu/science/article/pii/S0925400515001033

Healey, J. (2011). GSR Sock: A New e-Textile Sensor Prototype . Retrieved from IEEE Computer society: http://www.computer.org.ezproxy.umuc.edu/csdl/proceedings/iswc/2011/4438/00/4438a113.pdf

Hero Modares, R. S. (2011). Overview of Security Issues in Wireless Sensor Networks . Retrieved from http://www.computer.org.ezproxy.umuc.edu/csdl/proceedings/cimsim/2011/4562/00/4562a308.pdf

Moyna, N. (2012). Textile-based wearable sensors for assisting sports performance . Retrieved from http://www.computer.org.ezproxy.umuc.edu/csdl/proceedings/bsn/2009/3644/00/3644a307.pdf