Economical, No-Maintenance, Wearable Alcohol Sensor for Treatment, Research and Consumer Users

 描述(由申请人提供)：用于治疗、研究和消费用户的经济、无需维护的可穿戴酒精传感器酒精使用仍然是美国(每年8.5万人死亡)和全球(每年高达250万人死亡)的第三大死亡原因，仅在美国每年的经济成本就超过2230亿美元。虽然正在进行的临床研究继续推进对酒精使用对行为和生理影响的理解，但这些研究中的许多都缺乏对酒精血液水平的连续、定量和实时测量。许多临床研究主要依赖于受试者对酒精使用的自我报告，这严重限制了无法准确量化血液酒精水平、有意或无意的错误陈述、报告偏差和记忆伪迹。其他提供酒精客观测量的方法，如生物测定法和酒精测定仪，也受到重大限制，包括侵入性、持续的用户交互和/或无法提供酒精的实时定量测量。相比之下，Giner酒精透皮传感器(即WrisTAS(Tm)设备)提供了一种非侵入性、连续和用户友好的设备，用于测量通过皮肤扩散的酒精，然后将其与血液酒精水平相关联。Giner技术作为脚踝手镯用于刑事司法/执法市场的商业用途。然而，更经济和更方便消费者的设备的主要障碍是制造酒精传感元件所需的大量劳动力，以及重新填充储水器的维护要求。因此，吉纳针对这些障碍提出了创新的解决方案，开发了一种新的“免维护”(即无需重新注水)设备，以及替代制造技术，该技术将实现高产出、卷对卷的制造，旨在减少80%的组装时间和劳动力。随着WrisTAS(Tm)设备中使用的酒精传感元件的拟议创新，Giner将实现成本约99美元的新型经皮酒精传感器，从而进一步扩大其在临床研究以及目前尚未开发的市场中的使用，如酒精治疗/康复、专业监测(如飞行员、卡车司机、医生等)和消费市场。

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Economical, No aintenance, Wearable Alcohol Sensor for Treatment, Research and Consumer Users Alcohol use remains the third leading cause of death both in the US (85,000 deaths annually) and worldwide (up to 2.5 million deaths annually) with economic costs exceeding $223 billion annually in the US alone. While on-going clinical studies continue to advance the understanding of the behavioral and physiological effects of alcohol use, many of these studies suffer from the lack of a continuous, quantitative, and real-time measurement of alcohol blood levels. Many clinical studies primarily rely on subject self-report of alcohol use, which is severely limited by the inability to accurately quantitate blood alcohol levels, intentional or unintentional misrepresentation, reporting biases, and memory artifacts. Other methods that provide an objective measurement of alcohol, such as biological assays and breathalyzers, also suffer from significant limitations, including invasiveness, constant user interaction, and/or the inability to provide real-time quantitative measurements of alcohol. By contrast, the Giner transdermal alcohol sensor (i.e., WrisTAS(tm) device) provides a noninvasive, continuous, and user-friendly device for measuring alcohol that diffuses through the skin, which is then correlated to blood alcohol levels. The Giner technology is in commercial use for the criminal justice/law enforcement market as an ankle bracelet. However, the major obstacles to a more economical and consumer-friendly device are the substantial labor required to manufacture the alcohol sensing element and the maintenance requirement to refill the water reservoir. Therefore, Giner has proposed innovative solutions to both these obstacles through the development of a new "no maintenance" (i.e., no water refill) device, as well as alternative manufacturing techniques that will enable high-output, roll-to-roll manufacturing designed to reduce assembly time and labor by 80%. With the proposed innovations for the alcohol sensing element used in the WrisTAS(tm) Device, Giner will enable a new version of the transdermal alcohol sensor costing ~$99, thus expanding the use further in clinical research, as well as currently untapped markets, such as the alcohol treatment/rehabilitation, professional monitoring (e.g. pilots, truck drivers, doctors, etc.), and he consumer markets.