May is National Mental Health Awareness Month. Good mental health matters, improving the quality of our lives. Wenzhuo Wu, the Ravi and Eleanor Talwar Rising Star Associate Professor of Industrial Engineering, in Purdue’s College of Engineering, has created noninvasive sensors that monitor mental health from stress and anxiety to depression.
The first sensor technology is a wearable device capable of high-fidelity cardiovascular monitoring. Wu’s innovation is being developed by LifeSpan, a high-tech company, for game-based stress and anxiety intervention.
Wu said video game technology already has successfully been used to aid in the treatment of several childhood illnesses such as asthma, cancer, diabetes and even post-traumatic stress disorder.
“Other video game-like technology has recently been developed to increase users’ interest and engagement in biofeedback and to facilitate the learning of deep breathing techniques, relaxation and emotional self-regulation,” Wu said. “Although there is not yet ample empirical evidence demonstrating the efficacy of these new programs, it stands to reason that such technology may be useful, partly because children and adolescents are often avid video game users.”
The second sensor technology is EPICS, which are flexible and noninvasive sensors that monitor uric acid in human sweat. EPICS have higher sensitivity and better wearability and can be made from less expensive materials than traditional sensors that measure uric acid levels.
Wu said repeated monitoring of uric acid levels in human sweat over long periods of time could enable the unprecedented diagnosis, therapy and prognosis of several conditions including anxiety.
“We demonstrated that the EPICS devices achieve a fourfold enhancement in the UA sensing performance with a small compressive strain boosted by piezo-electrocatalysis during the electrochemical oxidation of UA on the surfaces of mechanically deformed zinc oxide nanorods,” he said. “They exhibited a superior sensitivity and limit of detection outperforming all reported flexible electrochemical UA sensors.”
To learn more about innovation at Purdue, visit the Purdue Innovates website.
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