In the area of flexible electronics, MC10 is one of the leaders. At CES this past week, we had the opportunity to sit down with VP of Technology Roozbeh Ghaffari and others from the MC10 team to learn more about the new products that utilize their innovative technology.
The first product MC10announced, the BioStamp Research Connect System (BioStampRC), is a flexible, wearable sensor specifically for medical research to capture movement and biometric data. It contains an accelerometer, 6-axis gyroscope, and electrodes to capture electrophysiological data such as an EMG or ECG. The data is stored on the device’s onboard memory and can be transferred via Bluetooth Low Energy to a mobile device. It also contains a wirelessly rechargeable battery that can last up to 36 hours depending on which sensors are active. Ghaffari says that multiple sensors can even be used in parallel to capture an even broader look of the wearer’s activity.
Much like Google Life Science/Verily‘s health-tracking wristband, this wearable is a tool that MC10 hopes researchers can use to develop their own applications and products. MC10 has created a web-based investigator portal to help researchers design their own studies as well as a mobile app to view the data from the sensor and execute the studies. Ghaffari also stated that as the BioStampRC has numerous potential applications, even MC10’s own future product roadmap will be affected by the direction that the industry moves as a result of insights gained from the BioStampRC.
The second product, while less high-tech looking, nicely demonstrates the stretchy capabilities of MC10’s advanced electronics. It’s called My UV Patch and is the result of a collaboration with L’Oreal. Measuring approximately one square inch in area and 50 micrometers thick (half the thickness of a strand of hair), My UV Patch can be stretched and adhered anywhere. It starts off transparent, but contains photosensitive dyes that change color in response to ultraviolet light exposure. Consumers can snap a picture of the patch with their iPhone to analyze how much UV exposure they have. The patch also contains NFC to communicate with Android devices.
Release information on the My UV Patch is still unknown, but MC10 seemed to indicate that you might find one packaged with a L’Oreal product sometime soon.
More information: BioStampRC, My UV Patch (press release)
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