The SARS-CoV 2 pandemic has forced the use of surgical or FFP2 face masks for a considerable number of hours during the day. The chemical-physical characterization of the air between the face and the mask (breathing zone) is useful both for identifying air quality and for any monitoring of the person's vital parameters.
To this aim, this research project proposes to develop an intelligent mask containing sensors capable of monitoring both the quality of the breathing zone (temperature, humidity and concentration of carbon dioxide) and some parameters of the breath (volatile organic compounds whose presence could indicate possible diseases). The sensors will be interfaced with electronic circuits able to transmit the acquired data via WiFi to a local network (for example a mobile phone) which in turn sends them to a database that can be accessed through a website. The website will present the data to registered users with different levels of access depending on whether the users themselves are researchers, doctors or hospitals.
The results achieved with this project are really versatile because the same electronic circuits and the same IT structure (website with databases at different access levels) can also be used in different applications, such as in telemedicine, sustainable agriculture or environmental monitoring. For example, air quality monitoring could be achieved using the same electronic circuits (but different sensors) and collecting the data taking advantage of a bicycle or and electric scooter that goes around the city.
As can be noticed from the section reporting the state-of-the-art, the active component of those smart¿face mask is the presence of fans to force air in-and-out of the mask and of voice amplifiers.
The face mask proposed in this project, instead, includes chemical and physical sensors and miniaturized electronic circuits aiming to:
- monitor the air quality inside the breathing zone measuring temperature, humidity and CO2 concentration;
- monitor health-related parameters such as volatile organic compounds that can be valuable indicators of metabolic status and can distinguish between healthy and diseased state [1];
- perform a simple data treatment before transmission to the cloud, in order to generate a warning signal to the face mask user;
- create a database where the measurement results are stored;
- create a web site with reserved access in order to manage the measurement results also from a physician point of view;
- implement software protocols for data protection and security;
- include an energy harvesting system.
As a results, the proposed face-mask intends to increase the intelligence of the protective device monitoring important air quality and/or health related parameters and transmitting them to a database, where they can be related to health side effect such as skin irritation or headache reported by the face-mask user. The possibility to monitor and store data, at appropriate sampling times, allows to have history of the parameters evolution and make statistically significant relationships for prolonged use.
It is important noticing that the main technological results achieved with this project can be easily transferred to different fields of application. For example, the same electronic circuits and the same IT structure (website with databases at different access levels) can also be used for distributed environment monitoring by changing just few components, namely the sensors for monitoring specific parameters. A bicycle or an electric scooter, moving in the city and equipped with these circuits, can provide a timely and spatial precise parameter distribution.
Besides the social and health related information that can be achieved from the data stored in the web-accessible database, the technologically innovative aspects of this project are:
- selection of sensors of miniaturized size in order to obtain flexibility for the positioning of the sensors in the internal volume of the mask, with ghost effect to improve the comfort characteristic of the mask;
- development of miniaturized and very low power consumption electronic boards;
- development of an energy harvesting system;
- development of light and comfortable face mask.
In particular, power consumptions in the different operating conditions will be extensively investigated focusing on the possibility to implement an energy harvesting as alternative power supply to batteries.
[1] Amann, Anton, Patrik Spanel, and David Smith. "Breath analysis: the approach towards clinical applications." Mini reviews in medicinal chemistry 7.2 (2007): 115-129.