Tech Tats: Tattoos that can track your health data

With new wearables hitting the global market every day, you are spoilt for choices. If tracking health data is your goal, then a biowearable developed by Chaotic Moon, a software design and development firm in Austin, Texas, might be a good choice.

Called Tech Tats, the tattoo made with conductive paint and other components has the ability to collect, store, send and receive data from the human body. The concept of the new wearable surfaces after the Austin-based studio was acquired by Accenture in July, although official details were not disclosed about the terms of the transaction.

As Chaotic Moon explains, "Tech Tats are what we've dubbed biowearables: wearable technology that isn't just, say, strapped to the user's wrist, but interacts with their wrist. (In this case, in the form of a tattoo.) In other words, you're eliminating clunky, expensive devices with a low-interference, low-cost, and low-hassle alternative, and using the user's skin as the interface. It's technology that is, in a sense, part of the user. The result? Total integration."

Eric Schneider, creative technologist hardware at Chaotic Moon, says this wearable can fetch information about early signs of fever, vital signs and heart rates. You can even carry your bank information on your skin such as credit card or your ID details, he added.

Chaotic Moon CEO Ben Lamm, in an interview with Techcrunch, said the new biowearable, currently in prototype, can collect and upload health data of the kind seen in Jawbone wristband or the Apple Watch, and send it to medical staff.

Like any other fashion tattoo, Tech Tats is temporary and can be washed off. The tattoo can monitor body temperature and detect if the user is stressed based on sweat, heart rate and hydration level. The information is uploaded via Bluetooth or mesh networks.

Apart from its health application, the team is thinking of a military application for the wearable. The military use could include detecting poisons in the air, pathogens in a soldier's body along with the capability of identifying when they are hurt.

"This is not something that can be easily removed like a Fitbit. It can be underneath a flack jacket, directly on the skin to be collecting this data and being reported back," Lamm noted about the military applications.

"It's an eco-friendly, non-invasive use of a platform that basically turns you into a human circuit board."

Additionally, Lamm also notes the use of the tattoo for location-tracking, for example keeping track of your kid in the amusement park. In terms of price, the tattoo kit is expected to be economical. Lamm added that the team is already in talks with its partners for the launch.