Professor of Diagnostic Wearables

Professor Can Dincer from the Technical University of Munich is the lead for Sensors and Wearables for Healthcare at the TUM School of Computation, Information and Technology. In an interview he points out:

• In the future, wearables will do more than track physical parameters such as pulse rate and steps. They will also monitor chemical and biological signals related to pathogens and hormones, for example.
• In combination with artificial intelligence, this will facilitate the early diagnosis of illnesses.
• The challenge is to measure the smallest concentrations of biomarkers in body fluids such as sweat or in exhaled breath with high accuracy and continuously.

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Professorship of Sensors and Wearables

Wearables and smart technology such as smart watches or sensor rings are already a routine part of everyday life and are also popular Christmas gifts. They track our pulse rate, count our steps or analyze our sleep patterns. How can they already influence our behavior today and what future developments are possible?

What do we mean by wearables?

The term basically refers to anything that we can wear on our bodies. Strictly speaking, however, a wearable also includes an electronic component. Examples would be smart watches or smart rings that use various sensors to monitor our current state of health, fitness, stress and sleep quality. Most systems in use today are based on physical parameters. They measure such criteria as blood pressure, oxygen concentrations, hydration or the duration and quality of our sleep. In our research, however, we are particularly interested in chemical and biological signals. We are trying to detect biomarkers such as hormones or proteins, drugs such as antibiotics, and disease causing pathogens such as viruses and bacteria – that are usually found through blood tests – in other biofluids.

How do wearables affect the way people look at their own health?

Wearables can help us to pay more attention to our health and lifestyles and monitor certain vital signs and biochemical parameters over extended periods. On the other hand, they can also cause us to worry unnecessarily about minor changes in the measured values. Consequently, it is essential for this process to be properly regulated. Our vision is to combine powerful wearables with artificial intelligence for facilitating early detection of diseases, even before patients show any symptoms. This will be possible if the daily use of wearables permits the comparison of past and present data so that we can respond promptly to changes in the measured parameters.

What role can wearables play in healthcare in the future?

I can envision three possible scenarios:

1. We experience symptoms and go to a doctor, who suspects a certain cause and gives us a wearable for continuous tracking of certain parameters for several days.

2. I expect to see a large increase in the functionalities of wearables in the future. Ideally, a single gadget will be capable of measuring many different vital signs and biochemical health parameters and tell us when we get up in the morning whether everything is within a normal range.

3. Wearables could also support us in taking the correct doses of medication in case of illness, since the doses can vary depending on time, body weight and age.

What direction will the development of wearables take in the coming years?

We want to get to the point where these devices can be used for biochemical parameters – ideally in combination with vital signs – that could previously be measured only with invasive methods. Until now, the standard method has been blood testing. We are trying to test other biofluids including sweat, interstitial fluid, exhaled breath or urine to find possible correlations with blood values. The biggest challenge is posed by the fact that molecules are much more diluted in these fluids than in the blood. This makes it much harder to detect certain parameters.

Major successes have already been achieved in the treatment of diabetes. Continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) systems constantly measure the blood sugar level. An insulin pump responds automatically to changes and delivers the required quantity. This combination can certainly be applied to other diseases in the future.