Wearable biopatch designed to help protect outdoor workers from heat-related illnesses

ATLANTA (KABC) — A new wearable device may soon be available to help keep farmworkers safe in the heat.

Roxana Chicas, a nurse scientist at Emory University in Georgia, has teamed up with the Georgia Institute of Technology to develop a wearable biopatch for outdoor workers that gathers data – like skin temperature and heart rate – and uses AI to help predict when a person is getting sick or overheating.

How does it work? You simply put the patch on your chest, and it starts gathering your vitals.

“Eventually, what our computer science team is going to do is use that data to train AI so that we are able to recognize someone who is heading into the danger zone before they collapse from heat stress and send them an alert in real time to let them know it’s time to take a break, to hydrate, to cool down,” Chicas explained.

She said this is especially useful for farmworkers, who are 35 times more likely to suffer heat-related deaths, and construction workers.

Chicas said the team worked with the farmworker community to come up with the device.

“They were very interested in having something that could protect them because they understand how dangerous it is to work outdoors in the heat,” she said. “They have been very receptive to it. They’ve tried it. We’ve tried it on 168 farmworkers, so they are ready to use technology and also to have AI help them.”

Chicas, who’s from El Salvador and came to the U.S. when she was 4, said her father worked in construction and landscaping – so the project is special to her.

Her hope is to get the biopatches on outdoor workers as soon as possible.