Wearable Skin Patch

L’Oréal unveiled My UV Patch, the first-ever stretchable skin sensor designed to monitor UV exposure, at the Consumer Electronics Show.

L’Oréal My UV Patch will help consumers educate themselves about sun protection.

The new patch is a first-of-its kind stretchable electronic, a transparent adhesive that stretches and adheres directly to any area of skin that you want to monitor.

Measuring just half the thickness of hair, it contains photosensitive dyes that factor in the baseline skin tone and change colors when exposed to UV rays to indicate varying levels of sun exposure.

The new technology arrives at a time when sun exposure has become a major health issue, with 90% of nonmelanoma skin cancers being associated with exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation from sun.

Consumers will be able to take a photo of the patch and upload it to the La Roche-Posay My UV Patch mobile app, which analyzes the varying photosensitive dye squares to determine the amount of UV exposure the wearer has received. The My UV Patch mobile app will be available on both iOS and Android, incorporating Near Field Communications (NFC)-enabled technology into the patch-scanning process for Android. My UV Patch is expected to be made available to consumers later this year.

Guive Balooch, Global Vice President of L’Oréal’s Technology Incubator, said:

“Connected technologies have the potential to completely disrupt how we monitor the skin’s exposure to various external factors, including UV. Previous technologies could only tell users the amount of potential sun exposure they were receiving per hour while wearing a rigid, non-stretchable device. The key was to design a sensor that was thin, comfortable and virtually weightless so people would actually want to wear it. We’re excited to be the first beauty company entering the stretchable electronics field and to explore the many potential applications for this technology within our industry and beyond.”

source L’Oréal