Keynotes

Bioelectronic devices for continuous monitoring of protein biomarkers

Shana Kelley, Northwestern University

To put disease-related biomarkers to work for personalized monitoring of health and disease, new high-performance technologies are needed to enable rapid and sensitive analysis of proteins and other biomarkers. Electrochemical methods providing low cost and direct biomarker readout have attracted a great deal of attention for this application. Recently we developed reagentless sensors that are powerful detectors for in vivo protein sensing (Nature Chemistry, 2021, J. am. Chem. Soc. 2023, Angew. Chem. Intl. Ed. 2023) as well as the analysis of viral particles in situ in the oral cavity (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2021). This talk will summarize the development of these sensors, their application to a variety of clinical problems, and the development of a range of implantable sensors for in vivo monitoring.

Developing Sustainable Point-of-Care Sensors to Support Newborn Health in Low-Resource Settings

Rebecca Richards-Kortum, Rice University

Neonatal conditions are the leading cause of death in low-income countries and the leading cause of lost years of life across sub-Saharan Africa. Every year, 1.1 million African newborns die. Most of these deaths could be prevented if front-line hospitals in every single district could provide quality care to small and sick newborns. This talk will describe how clinicians and engineers in the NEST360 (Newborn Essential Solutions & Technologies) program are working to develop and roll out point-of-care sensors to detect and monitor critical newborn conditions designed for use in low-resource settings. NEST360 is partnering with African governments to implement a package of care to improve newborn survival in district hospitals, including: Delivering and maintaining a bundle of rugged, effective devices for newborn care; Educating clinicians and biomedical technicians to use and maintain devices; Implementing evidence-based care for small and sick newborns using locally owned dashboards to track and improve quality of care; and Catalyzing country-led change and investment to strengthen newborn care and technology management policies to promote equitable scaling and sustainability. NEST360 implemented the NEST360 package for ~90,000 babies annually admitted to the newborn wards at a learning network of 67 hospitals across Malawi, Tanzania, Kenya, and Nigeria. Evidence from NEST360 shows that when facilities increased coverage of interventions, especially for preterm babies, newborn death rates were >20% lower. Lessons to be shared from the NEST360 network include current clinical gaps that could be addressed with novel sensors, as well as pathways to translation and scale of novel, low-cost sensors.

Transforming Smart Devices into Life-Saving Systems

Jake Sunshine, Google

Unwitnessed out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) remains a persistent public health challenge and barrier to time-sensitive intervention with cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and defibrillation. Witness status, whereby a cardiac arrest event is directly observed, is a strong and independent predictor of survival given the enormous prognostic role of time and the ability of a human to activate an emergency response. Up to three quarters of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest events, however, are unwitnessed, amounting to millions of deaths worldwide, many in individuals deprived of an opportunity for meaningful resuscitation because, simply, no one knows they need help. Minimizing the time from collapse to intervention is the foundation of successful resuscitation and represents the first key link in the OHCA chain of survival. In unwitnessed OHCA scenarios, consumer wearable devices represent a compelling means to detect signs of arrest and summon help when a user is unresponsive and no witness is present. Leveraging these devices’ embedded optical and motion sensors to measure physiology consistent with OHCA, and their communication capabilities to call first responders, presents an opportunity to convert unwitnessed OHCA events into functionally witnessed events, presenting a new paradigm for OHCA detection and more efficient resuscitation.

Soft Wearable Systems with Integrated Microfluidics and Biosensors for Remote Hydration Management

Roozbeh Ghaffari, Northwestern University

Dehydration has many harmful effects on cognitive and physical performance as well as physiological function, in the context of sports, industrial work, clinical rehabilitation, and military theater. Because sweat and electrolyte losses vary across individuals, conventional sweat testing strategies using absorbent patch techniques are employed in laboratory settings to characterize sweat biomarkers and hydration needs; however, these conventional techniques are not suitable for remote environments. Here, we present a wearable microfluidic sweat-sensing platform that incorporates colorimetric sensors and electrochemical sensing across a broad range of sweating rates, electrolytes, metabolites, hormones, and proteins, in tandem with biophysical sensing capabilities. Expansive field trials were conducted in sports, industrial safety, and medical applications, showing significant correlations between these advanced microfluidic sensors and conventional techniques and the utility of this platform to impact outcomes in remote care.