Researchers at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering have developed a compute patch that can run AI models directly on the body, rather than sending data to a connected smartphone, cloud server or other external processor.
Published in the
Nature Electronics journal, researcher Sihong Wang likened the development to having a “personal, instantaneous doctor integrated into [users’] devices."
Though it’s far from being commercially available, the tech tackles the fact that most wearables today essentially serve as data collectors only. While smartwatches have long been measuring heart rate, movement, oxygen levels, ECG signals and more, that data typically gets transferred to a smartphone for analysis, or even cloud servers in the case of the newly launched Google Health with AI capabilities.
Skin-based AI inference could revolutionize healthcare
The new patch that’s been developed by researchers performs both the sensing and AI inference directly on the skin, with analysis occurring in milliseconds without relying on wireless communication, cloud computing or other external factors.
Ultra-low latency is especially important for some medical conditions like ventricular fibrillation, where even a few seconds of latency could make a difference.
However, there are other benefits to this technology too, with the paper highlighting a reduction in power consumption and privacy risks thanks to the on-device processing.
Stretchable transistors that bend and conform to the skin are credited with making the patch possible, while conventional chips and rigid silicon in legacy hardware would previously have made this impossible. However, a gel electrolyte layer presented its own challenges, threatening to move like a liquid and short circuit electrical components.
“What we had to ask was whether we could use or change the properties of these polymers to make them compatible with photolithography—the main patterning method used in the microelectronics industry,” Wang added.”
