GE to developing wearable RFID sensors to detect airborne chemical agents

GE Global Research, the technology development arm for the General Electric Company, has received a $2-million award from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), part of the National Institutes of Health to develop wearable RFID sensors to alert people of the presence of environmental chemical agents in the air and sample exhaled breath to serve as an early indicator of disease.

RFID sensors are commonly used to track a wide variety of items, from products in a supply chain to baggage at an airport. GE's sensors are unique in that they combine RFID tracking with an acute gas sensing capability, which can detect the presence of potentially harmful chemical agents in the air.

Because these sensors can be made at a size smaller than a penny, they can be part of a typical identification badge and serve as a pre-emptive or early warning for people about the presence of chemical agents in the air. Detecting chemical agents in this way could provide much more information about the relationship between a person's health and the environment in which a person lives.

Radislav Potyrailo, a principal scientist at GE Global Research who is leading the wearable RFID sensor project, said, ''We are creating a dynamic sensing platform that will provide real-time information to people about the presence of potentially harmful chemical agents in the air.''

Potyrailo added, ''GE's sensing platform could be readily adapted to many other interesting applications. For example, it could be used to analyze a person's breath. Simply breathing on the sensor could potentially pick up biomarkers that serve as an early signal to the presence of certain diseases such as diabetes or cancer and metabolic disorders.''

''NIEHS is pleased to support this type of research,'' said David Balshaw, Ph.D., a program administrator at the NIEHS. ''In recent years, NIEHS has placed an emphasis on using innovative technologies like these sensors to better monitor individual exposures and understand how environmental exposures affect disease risk.'' NIEHS provided the funding through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.