French cosmetics and beauty Company L’Oreal has teamed up with Irish product engineering firm PCH to introduce My UV Patch at CES 2016.
My UV Patch is a tattoo like "stretchable sensor" designed to monitor UV exposure and make consumers aware about sun protection.
The sensor is transparent and stretches and adheres directly to any area of skin that consumers want to monitor.
It is 50 micrometers thick and contains photosensitive dyes that change colors when exposed to UV rays. Thisshows the varying levels of sun exposure to the wearer.
The My UV Patch will also be available in shape of a heart, with little blue squares that fade when the skin is exposed to cancer-causing rays.
Users will also be able to take a photo of the patch and upload it to the La Roche-Posay My UV Patch mobile app.
The app is designed to analyse the varying photosensitive dye squares to determine the amount of UV exposure the wearer has received.
L’Oréal’s Technology Incubator global vice president Guive Balooch said: "Connected technologies have the potential to completely disrupt how we monitor the skin’s exposure to various external factors, including UV,"
"Previous technologies could only tell users the amount of potential sun exposure they were receiving per hour while wearing a rigid, non-stretchable device.
The key was to design a sensor that was thin, comfortable and virtually weightless so people would actually want to wear it.
