SBIR Phase II: Cover-2: Hydration monitoring in athletes

Award ID: 2234491

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project focuses on athlete safety and performance. Heat stroke, known as the silent killer, represents one of the top three causes of fatalities among high school and collegiate athletes. The goal of this project is to develop a wearable system for non-invasive, real-time hydration monitoring of athletes to prevent severe dehydration. A key discriminator of the innovation employs a novel wearable sensor capable of capturing bioimpedance measurements tailored to the unique physiological characteristics of each athlete for personalized safety. Coupled with deep learning methods and cloud-based analytics, the wearable system could send early alert messages to the athletic staff before an athlete approaches adverse or life-threatening conditions. The commercial potential will provide the sports science community with novel insights to customize player activities, manage rest periods, and adjust athlete hydration behaviors. Potential outcomes derived from the project will minimize unnecessary athlete fatalities, reduce medical costs, and minimize the risk of long-term health conditions. This project addresses the market need for the non-invasive, real-time, field-based hydration assessment of athletes. Acute water loss (dehydration) during sports participation induced by long-term exposure to hot and humid conditions leads to adverse health conditions. Dehydration impacts an athletes health in four critical areas: cardiovascular stress, cognitive impairment, thermoregulation failure, and heat stroke. Limitations of current field-based methods include the use of manual (e.g., weight charts) or invasive assessments (e.g., urine tests). The company's fully integrated wearable sensor performs bioimpedance spectroscopy for non-invasive, real-time hydration monitoring. Continuous measurements generate a bioimpedance profile unique to each athlete that captures the fluctuations from the extracellular water and intracellular water compartments. This innovation will give athletic trainers insight into their athletes safety, health, and performance. Phase II objectives include: 1) building the cloud-based platform, 2) advancing the functionality and sensitivity of the wearable sensor, and 3) deploying the proprietary deep learning algorithms to the cloud for large-scale monitoring. In addition, the team will perform beta testing with potential customers. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Program Director: Alastair Monk