Dermal-fluid-enabled detection platforms for non-invasive ambulatory monitoring

Abstract

The recent COVID-19 pandemic has reminded the healthcare community that realizing remote and ambulatory monitoring while providing clinically relevant health data is critically important. The ability to detect important analytes in easily accessible dermal fluids such as sweat and interstitial fluid (ISF) using disposable and wearable technologies in decentralized settings would be a critical step forward to realize ambulatory care. In this review, we will first provide a detailed description and analysis of the partitioning of major biomarkers of interest in sweat and ISF, followed by in-depth analysis of the clinical relevance of these biomarkers in dermal fluids through providing insightful understanding of their partitioning mechanisms based on literature findings. Using chronic diseases in the aged population and drug monitoring as exemplary cases, we will delineate the development and challenges of sample collection and extraction of dermal fluids and the corresponding state-of-the-art wearable sensors and diagnostics that may hold promise to be implemented in the practical setting of ambulatory monitoring. We believe this in-depth review will be of significant interest to the community as it provides a comprehensive and holistic review and offers a promising outlook on how ambulatory monitoring could be achieved by wearable sensors utilizing non-invasive dermal fluids.