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BACtrack
The Skyn, which measures a person's alcohol levels through their sweat.
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This wristband will warn you when you've had too much to drink
Skyn tracks a person’s alcohol levels through their sweat, and send alerts when they go over a certain limit.
A WRISTBAND WHICH TRACKS alcohol levels and warns you to ease up on your drinking has been created.
Skyn looks very similar to fitness trackers like FitBit and Jawbone but instead of tracking steps, it tracks a person’s BAC (blood alcohol concentration) by analysing their sweat.
It is not seen as a replacement for traditional breathalysers as it takes roughly 45 minutes for alcohol to be transmitted through the skin.
As well as providing data for researchers and clinicians, it could be used as a way of tracking a person’s drinking habits.
Some uses would include warning you to slow down your drinking when you approach a certain limit, or help keep a person sober by alerting a family member when the device detects alcohol in their system.
The device recently won a major health competition in the US which challenged participants to create a discreet device capable of measuring blood alcohol levels in near real-time.
Other products created for the competition included a colour-changing temporary tattoo called BioInk which does the same thing when attached to the skin.
The device is made by BACtrack, a US company that makes breathalysers. It already has a bit of history with similar devices, having released Bluetooth breathalysers which transmit data directly to your smartphone.
The company is looking at releasing it as an official product and will be taking pre-orders for the device soon. The device will be available in “limited quantities” at the end of the year.
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