Biocoin: an open-source wearable platform for multiplexed and multimodal biosensing

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Engineering
• Wearable Technology
• Biosensing

Background:

• Wearable biosensors offer potential for proactive, precision medicine via continuous biochemical monitoring.
• Clinical translation is limited by hardware accessibility, miniaturization, multiplexing, and power constraints.
• Existing systems often fail to meet multiple on-body operational demands simultaneously, hindering reusability.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce Biocoin, the first fully open-source, open-hardware wearable biosensing platform.
• To provide a reconfigurable, general-purpose framework addressing key hardware barriers in biosensor development.
• To accelerate the validation and clinical translation of on-body biosensors.

Main Methods:

• Development of a 530 mm² wireless wearable device.
• Integration of >10 multiplexed sensor inputs and multi-method sensing capabilities (amperometry, voltammetry, potentiometry, impedimetry, temperature).
• Incorporation of current-monitored iontophoresis for biofluid extraction and ultra-low power optimizations.

Main Results:

• Demonstrated benchtop-comparable performance across broad physicochemical sensing modalities.
• Achieved months-long operation with microampere-level power consumption for multimodal sensing.
• Successfully integrated miniaturization, multiplexing, multi-method sensing, iontophoresis, and low-power wireless operation.

Conclusions:

• Biocoin removes significant hardware accessibility barriers for on-body biosensor validation.
• The open-source, open-hardware platform facilitates the development and translation of clinically actionable wearable biosensors.
• This unified framework supports diverse applications, accelerating research and clinical implementation.