Hand-held, battery powered CO2 monitor design could improve the health of millions around the world.

Monitoring a breath can tell a person more about their health than they might think. The changing CO₂ content of breath creates a waveform shape of the inhalation and exhalation that has been established as an indicator for several medical conditions. However, the equipment needed to detect this is large, expensive, and mains-powered, which has restricted its use to monitoring anaesthesia in operating theatres and critical care.

Gas Sensing Solutions (GSS) is shaking things up with its innovative CO₂sensor technology. The company uses a specially developed LED as a light source at the heart of the sensor. As this can turn on and off almost instantaneously, readings can be taken at more than 50 times a second. Also, the LED requires very little power, enabling battery-powered CO₂ sensing devices to be created with long battery lives.

This breakthrough in CO₂ sensing is being commercialised for the medical market by GSS’ sister company, Cambridge Respiratory Innovations Limited (CRiL). GSS has exclusively developed an ultra-fast, compact version of its SprintIR^®6S CO₂ sensor for CRiL to provide the level of accuracy needed to produce detailed waveforms and to work in the challenging medical environment. This has enabled CRiL to develop a hand-held personal respiratory monitor, called N-Tidal™, which analyses CO₂ levels in normal tidal breathing.

To find out more about the CO2 sensors used for high-speed breath analysis applications, click here to read the full article.