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

 描述（由申请人提供）：用于治疗、研究和消费者用户的经济型、无维护、可穿戴式酒精传感器酒精使用仍然是美国（每年85，000例死亡）和全球（每年高达250万例死亡）的第三大死因，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的行为和生理影响的理解，但这些研究中的许多研究缺乏对血液酒精水平的连续，定量和实时测量。许多临床研究主要依赖于受试者自我报告的酒精使用，这是严重限制的无法准确定量血液酒精水平，有意或无意的失实陈述，报告偏见，和记忆文物。提供酒精的客观测量的其他方法，诸如生物测定和呼气测醉器，也受到显著的限制，包括侵入性、持续的用户交互和/或不能提供酒精的实时定量测量。相比之下，Giner透皮酒精传感器（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技术在商业上用于刑事司法/执法市场，作为脚踝手镯。然而，更经济和消费者友好的装置的主要障碍是制造酒精感测元件所需的大量劳动力和再填充储水器的维护要求。因此，Giner通过开发一种新的“免维护”（即，无水补充）设备，以及替代制造技术，这将使高产量，卷到卷的制造设计，以减少装配时间和劳动力的80%。通过对WrisTAS（TM）设备中使用的酒精传感元件进行创新，Giner将实现新版本的经皮酒精传感器，成本约为99美元，从而进一步扩大了在临床研究中的使用，以及目前尚未开发的市场，如酒精治疗/康复，专业监测（例如飞行员，卡车司机，医生等），消费者市场。

 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.