I-Corps: Smart Mask for Respiratory Monitoring and Prevention of Airborne Diseases

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is the development of a data collection system called Smart Mask, which provides senior care communities with a safe operational environment and identifies actions that may help caregivers understand the risk of respiratory disease transmission. The overall goal is to combat the seasonal resurgence of COVID-19-like diseases by tracking the health and safe practices followed by essential workers in such facilities. At a societal level, this technology will help to monitor an active hotspot region where symptomatic cases spike suddenly. The technology will also assist decision-makers in setting up corrective actions. The proposed mask has several wireless connectivity options with the option to share data with third party apps for reporting health abnormalities and give public health officials a real-time awareness of possible breakouts. Additionally, Smart Mask assists in raising awareness of harmful hygiene habits, to help in preventing contamination and leading to a healthier society. The Smart Mask offers essential care facilities a way to ensure their own health, sustain business growth by reducing the risk of facility spread, and inspire trust among potential customers and current employees.

This I-corps project provides a data collection and analysis system using a network of Smart Masks. Each Smart Mask has wireless connectivity with a smartphone and the following sensors: health metric sensors to non-invasively measure respiratory rate, oxygen saturation and body temperature. The Smart Masks provide notifications of abnormal readings to the user. They also have gesture sensors that track the gestures of touching or moving hands close to the face, using thin film and flexible capacitance coupling plates on the mask. Finally, the Smart Masks have proximity sensing using capacitive coupling that performs mask-to-mask and mask-to-infrastructure distance ranging using signal strength measurements and coupling of capacitive fields. The I-Corps customer discovery activities will explore the commercial potential of the proposed Smart Mask technology.

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.