mHealth Researchers Explore the Telehealth Value of a Tattoo

mHealth researchers at the University of Missouri are developing temporary tattoos that could someday serve a wide range of uses in telehealth.

Once the domain of sailors, athletes, artists and rebellious teens, body art could be designed to capture biometric data in remote patient monitoring programs. The challenge lies in designing a digital health platform that can accurately capture data and transmit it to an online site.

At UM, that platform is pencil and paper.

“The conventional approach for developing an on-skin biomedical electronic device is usually complex and often expensive to produce,” Zheng Yan, an assistant professor at the university’s College of Engineering, said in a recent press release. “In contrast, our approach is low-cost and very simple. We can make a similar device using widely available pencils and paper.”

As detailed in a recent study posted in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Yan and his team of researchers focused on the fact that graphite – the common ingredient in pencil lead – conducts a high amount of energy through the friction caused by writing on paper. And pencils with 93 percent graphite are best for creating on-skin biolelectronic devices, or tattoos.

And unlike Jimmy Buffett’s lament of “a permanent reminder of a temporary feeling,” these tattoos would last only about a week. Once they’re drawn on paper, the paper is treated with a biocompatible spray-on adhesive, so that it sticks to a patient’s skin, until the paper decomposes.

Tattoos aren’t an entirely new concept in mHealth, having been around and studied for the past few years as healthcare providers and innovators look for new methods and modalities to remotely monitor a patient’s health and activities. They’re being studied alongside patches, bandages, smart clothing and other wearables.

Yan sees potential for the mHealth platform in everything from remote patient monitoring to population health during a public health emergency.

“For example, if a person has a sleep issue, we could draw a biomedical device that could help monitor the person’s sleep levels,” he said. “Furthermore, this low-cost, easily customizable approach could allow scientists to conduct research at home, such as during a pandemic.”