Detecting Primary Biomarkers: A new Wearable Technology

Biometric wearable, render by Marco Locatelli

In October 2021, the Biodesign Challenge and the Google Hardware Design Studio partnered to create a month-long design sprint to explore better ways to produce materials and systems that are truly sustainable. Marco Locatelli and Genefer Baxter, designers at Aula Future, were chosen out of many applicants to develop a project for the competition’s non-student-track.

E-Waste: Pollutant to resource

Advancements in wearable hardware have helped to facilitate close personal health monitoring. This intimate and seamless interaction between your health and technology has made the early detection and even prevention of illnesses possible.

This has led to growing demand and a booming market for wearables. The acquisition of FitBit by Google and the continued rise in popularity of the Apple Watch are indications of the interest that big tech companies have in this rising sector. In fact, this market is projected to grow about 18% to $265 billion dollars, within the next five years.

However, while we are using new technologies to increase our health and wellness, the unsustainable way in which we design these products has created one of the fastest-growing problems that face us today: the problem of e-waste accumulation.

E-waste is any electrical or electronic equipment that’s been discarded. It is known to be extremely hard to disassemble and recycle. Heavy metals present in the circuits, as well as toxic pollutants in the plastics, have made this type of waste one of the most dangerous and unregulated, impacting our health and planet.

The environmental impact resulting from the growing consumer IoT (Internet of Things) market, which includes wearables, and the e-waste it generates, remains unaddressed. Less than 18% of the e-waste created in 2019 was recycled; the rest was left to be dumped or burned in landfills, according to the UNU report. If manufacturers keep producing wearables without taking sustainability into account, they'll end up being just another product contributing to e-waste accumulation.

How can we seriously innovate in the health and wellness industry while polluting our environment at the same time?

We began to wonder if e-waste could be harnessed as a resource instead of accumulating in landfills.

“What if we could innovate wearable health products by harnessing e-waste, and turning it into something that actually keeps us healthier?”

Project Design - A new kind of wearable

Using e-waste as a resource for the creation of biomedical applications is a topic that's been extensively studied and is producing promising results. With this knowledge, Aula Future imagines a unique Wearable made from recycled e-waste that enhances the capabilities of present-day sensing technology in a sustainable way.

The structural foundation of the product comes from plastics which make up 20% of the e-waste in landfills. Recycling PET (polyethylene terephthalate) is a well-understood process where plastics from electronics are stripped, melted, and re-spun into polyester fibers. This process requires 88% less energy than producing it from raw materials, making it a simple and cost-efficient solution. Recycled polyester is almost the same as virgin polyester in terms of quality, and any effort to gather this material from e-waste before it reaches the landfill is a good step toward bringing circularity to the wearable sector.

The foundation is then embedded with copper nanoparticles also recovered from e-waste. Scientists have successfully used bacteria to extract metals including copper from e-waste, through a process called bioleaching where bacteria produce chemicals that leach metals from electronic scrap. Bioleaching is a cost-effective, sustainable, and commercially viable process to recover precious metals. The potential applications and profitability of precious and base metals are strong incentives for researchers to find more and more sustainable methods for metal recovery from e-waste.

While absorbing copper, the microorganisms synthesize it into nanoparticles, a resource in high demand for their applications in medicine, agriculture, the cosmetic industry, and drug delivery. Nanoparticles like the ones we create have also proven useful in electrochemical biosensing and electronics.

Because of their properties, we are able to design an effective biosensor for the detection of primary biomarkers such as electrolytes like potassium and sodium, amino acids, and metabolites like glucose in your sweat. Our technology has many implications. Successfully measuring these biomarkers could mean the early detection of illnesses like diabetes, for example.

Popular devices like the FitBit and Apple Watch usually rely on physiological signals such as heart rate variability or ECG signals. However, these physiological signals are often merely secondary reactions, therefore, the sensing of primary biomarkers like the ones this Wearable detects may provide a more accurate way of catching imbalances or deficiencies early on.

The interactions between the copper nanoparticles and molecules found in sweat produce electrical signals in the band. The signals will be read and processed by a small microcontroller designed to send these insights to your personal devices. Our users will be able to generate a report that they can share with their medical provider and create a health plan that is customized and appropriate for their specific needs.

The end product is a sustainable, cutting-edge Wearable that can sense primary biomarkers, creating an enhanced intimate relationship between you and your health.

Check out our project video:

Reflection and next steps

At the moment, a microcontroller and battery, which could potentially end up as e-waste, are currently necessary to read and transmit the changes in electrical signals.

To prevent our Wearable from contributing to the waste problem, we have designed this component to be simple, detachable, and reusable so that it won't end up in landfills in the first place. Because the band acts as a sensor itself, the microcontroller can be a much simpler unit, making it easier to disassemble and recycle for future products. Considering the limited power options currently available for Wearable devices, we are looking into how nanoparticles could be employed as flexible electronic circuits and energy-harvesting systems, as a possible next step for this project.

Vision and final thoughts

Our process, which harnesses e-waste and leverages biodesign, could provide designers and manufacturers the opportunity to innovate in the Wearables market while minimizing environmental impact. For example, with further research and development, additional sensing capabilities could be added. While copper is useful to detect specific markers, other nanoparticles from e-waste like gold could also be harvested and applied to detect different biomarkers.

We envision this technology to impact more than just Wearables and for it to be applied to the expanding Internet of Things (IoT) market, enhancing our experience in the home and beyond. Our hope is to contribute to a circular bio-economy of sustainable products and to contribute to the enhancement of the sensing capabilities of devices in the IoT.

This design is not only a new Wearable device but also an innovative process. Wearable devices and biometric trackers help us to gain insights into important data, and to maintain a higher level of health and wellness.

We want this industry to continue to innovate and push the envelope so that we can be a healthier, happier society. But we want to do it in a way that doesn't contribute to the destruction of our environment.

Thanks for reading!

Project Reference List

Mahsa Baniasadi, Advances in bioleaching as a sustainable method for metal recovery from e-waste: A review, Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry, Volume 76, 2019.
Salouti M., Faghri Zonooz N. (2017) Biosynthesis of Metal and Semiconductor Nanoparticles, Scale-Up, and Their Applications.
Nasreen I. Hulkoti, T.C. Taranath, Biosynthesis of nanoparticles using microbes—A review, Colloids and Surfaces B: Biointerfaces, Volume 121, 2014,
Inner Workings: How bacteria could help recycle electronic waste, Roberta Kwok
Mathew A.A., Parthasarathy P., Vivekanandan S. (2021) Development of Copper Nanoparticles from E-waste for Biomedical Applications.
Sandeep Kumar, Wandit Ahlawat, Rajesh Kumar, Neeraj Dilbaghi, Graphene, carbon nanotubes, zinc oxide and gold as elite nanomaterials for fabrication of biosensors for healthcare, Biosensors and Bioelectronics, Volume 70, 2015,
Shuhua Wang, Lixiang Chen, Xiuli Zhou, Weifu Yan, Rui Ding, Bilian Chen, Chin-Tsan Wang, Feng Zhao, Enhanced bioleaching efficiency of copper from printed circuit boards without iron loss, Hydrometallurgy, Volume 180, 2018.