Wearable and Stationary Point-of-Care IoT Air Pollution Sensors for Pediatric Asthma Research and Management*

Abstract

The lack of mechanistic understanding of pediatric asthma development is partly due the lack of objective measures of environmental exposure metrics correlated with physiological responses. Here we report cloud-based wearable and stationary IoT air pollution sensors which can measure an asthma patient’s exposure to ozone, NO2 and aldehydes in real-life settings. The wrist-watch shaped sensor can measure formaldehyde levels in air from 30ppb to 10ppm using fuel cell technology, and continuously operate over 7 days without recharging. The smart-speaker sized stationary sensor measures ozone and NO2 from 20ppb to 1000ppb in the air. The wearable sensor can wirelessly upload data to the stationary sensor or an Android smartphone via Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). The stationary sensor or the smartphone functions as a gateway to a cloud-based informatics system which handles sensor data storage, management and analytics. Potential applications of these point-of-care IoT sensors include epidemiological studies of asthma development and exacerbations, personalized asthma management and environmental monitoring.