Have been working on in-vehicle Health & Wellness Technology Integration opportunities since 2016 – the sad part is integration into next-generation vehicles since then has been slow to nothing of consequence. Still will keep investigating and pushing.
With the increasing demand for safer and stress-free in-vehicle experience, healthcare providers have spotted an opportunity to move beyond hospital environments to step into moving cars to monitor people’s health in real-time. Numerous healthcare and wellbeing solution providers are collaborating with automotive OEMs to develop wellness solutions for unique in-vehicle environments. Refer to IDEA POKE.
Two groups can benefit especially. Parents of young children naturally want to protect the health of their kids. Then there are the professional drivers of taxis and delivery vans who spend their working days in their vehicles and often face a higher risk of infection from passengers or others they meet. People who suffer from allergies or asthma could also reduce the risk of attacks, especially when caught for long periods in traffic. Refer to LUMILEDS.
Research as of April 20th, 2022, suggests that the Delta and Omicron strains survive significantly longer on surfaces. The study shows the original strain of SARS-CoV-2, commonly called the Wuhan Strain, can survive on most surfaces for approximately 2 days whereas the Delta variant can survive on surfaces for almost 5 days and the Omicron variant, the most durable of them all, can survive on surfaces for up to 8 days. Refer to Michrochem Lab.
In many natural settings and most chronic infections, bacteria live in adhesive, layered communities called biofilms. Biofilms are composed of dead cells and debris, all glued together with extra-cellular compounds such as polysaccharides. This layer of protection acts as a barrier, making it difficult for disinfectants and antibiotics to penetrate and act on the microorganism.
Air Quality Monitors to Help You Track Air Pollution. Below are a few in-market products. Refer to The Spruce.
Air pollution is one of the most frequent and well-known environmental problems. Air quality in vehicle cabins is usually worse than at home or work due to several factors. Pollutants that reduce the quality of the air find their way into the vehicle cabin through the ventilation system, or HVAC, or through window openings, imperfect seals, and other holes. Other mobility paradigms like car sharing are changing the traditional use of private automobiles, opening the door to more intensive use, and contributing to a lower quality air onboard the vehicles. Pollutants could be present in the interior cabin by other means such as:
The emission of interior parts or systems in ambient temperature (VOCs, O3…), human breathing process combined with a lack of fresh airflow resulting in low O2 and high CO2 concentrations, intensive use of the car in new shared mobility (microbes, allergens, smells…) and presence of humidity in the seats/floor/ HVAC (stimulating microbial growing) are all contributors. Refer to the ENNOMOTIVE.
New Technology Concept: A group of students from Imperial College London has invented a Tire Collective device that is fitted to the wheel and uses electrostatics to collect particles as they are worn off the tires. It is estimated that tire-wear accounts for nearly half of road transport particulate emissions. The inventors claim their prototype can collect 60% of all airborne particles released from tires under a controlled environment.
Once collected, the fragments can be reused in new tires or to make other materials such as ink. The Tire Collective team has demonstrated this by printing their business cards using ink made from collected tire dust. Refer to Energy Live News.
Rolfhartge AELUS mobile air purifier has already won several awards.
Weighing just 880 grams, the AELUS unit is significantly lighter than the 1,000g limit set by the Federal Environment Agency for vehicle occupant protection in the event of an accident. Featuring a HEPA H13 filter and the first-ever patented automobile-specific photocatalysis sluice with UV-A / UV-C LEDs and a titanium dioxide-coated filter fleece, AELUS also meets the Agency standard that mandates cleaning the air in an average vehicle cabin five to six times an hour.
Compact and user-friendly, the AELUS unit can be quickly installed in and removed from a vehicle and transferred to the bedroom, hotel, or office where it is powered by the AC/DC adaptor supplied. Ensuring better air quality wherever it is needed, the versatile AELUS was designed for today’s busy people on the move. Refer https://www.rolfhartge.de/en/healthcare-neu/.
Inhalio is enabling large corporations to make the digital scent transformation into IoT Home & Automotive markets with its Digital Scent 3.0 Platform. Inhalio digital dry-air diffusion and intelligent scent cartridge technology unleashes the power of science and scent to significantly enhance in-vehicle experiences, deliver fine fragrances into home markets, and support health, wellness, and wellbeing solutions. They focus on the science of scent using a data-centric process of precise scent infusion, molecular dry-air diffusion, and detailed customer insights. Refer https://inhalio.com/.
Philips’s 3-stage filtration process removes up to 99% of in-car air pollution according to their website. Their Automotive clean air
system GPC20GPX1 is tested as 3x better than ionizer, 3 air-quality level indication, Automatic switch on/off, filter replacement indicator and as earlier stated removes up to 99% of fine particles & toxic gasses. Basic product description Noise level 40 (Low) – 50 (High) dB, with air particle sensor and air quality indicator (AQI), automatic On/Off, filter replacement indicator, frequency 50 Hz, two speeds, power requirement 3W, filter Lifetime 350 hr and clean air delivery rate is 10 m³/h. Refer to Philips.
There are also a few Apps to Help You Stay Safe and Healthy in Your Car. For example, you may want to refer to AAA Mobile, Open Road, SaferCar, HUM, T-Mobile SyncUp Drive, Sprint Drive, Harman Spark, and OnMyWay. Very important that you Drive with Care Using These Apps. Refer to MakeUseOf.
Ford Motor Company is working with healthcare companies WellDoc, Medtronic, and SDI Health to include health and wellness in-car connectivity solutions on the Ford SYNC platform.
The platform makes use of AppLink to allow drivers to access smartphone apps by voice control. Ford is joining with WellDoc, a Baltimore-based developer of chronic disease management solutions, to integrate WellDoc’s Diabetes Manager System into the SYNC platform to help people with type 2 diabetes manage their disease while in their car. The integration is designed to allow diabetics to enter data such as medications, exercise, and diet information through speech-to-text interaction while in their vehicle, then gain access to WellDoc’s clinical decision support tools. Refer to HealthcareITNews.
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