My Skin Track pH by La Roche-Posay, introduced recently at the 2019 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, is a wearable microfluidic sensor and companion app designed to measure personal skin pH levels and create customized product regimens to better care for skin.

The sensor, developed by L’Oréal along with its skincare brand La Roche-Posay, received a CES 2019 Innovation Award, named a “Best of Innovation” winner in the Wearable Technology Products category.

“The scientific and medical communities have long known the link between skin pH levels and common skin concerns that millions of people experience every day,” says Guive Balooch, global vice president of the L’Oréal Technology Incubator, an arm of L’Oréal’s Research & Innovation Division, in a media release from L’Oréal USA.

“Our goal is to use this advanced technology to empower consumers with meaningful information about their skin, so that they can find the products that are right for their individual needs. At L’Oréal, we know that health is the future of beauty and we are committed to leveraging technology to bring powerful insights and solutions to our consumers,” Balooch adds.

My Skin Track pH provides an accurate pH reading via a simple two-step process, per the release:

  1. The wearer places the sensor on their inner arm, leaving it in place for 5-15 minutes—until the center two dots take on color.
  2. Next, the wearer opens the My Skin Track pH app and photographs the sensor. Utilizing an advanced algorithm, the app reads the pH measurement, as well as the wearer’s local sweat loss—the rate of perspiration on the skin’s surface—to assess skin health and make customized La Roche-Posay product recommendations to care for skin and balance pH.

My Skin Track pH was created by L’Oréal in partnership with Epicore Biosystems, a manufacturer of microfluidic platforms and soft wearable sensors.

“Epicore is thrilled to collaborate with L’Oréal, an expert in skincare science, to create a new use-case for this technology that drives new research and understanding around skin pH,” says Roozbeh Ghaffari, PhD, co-founder and CEO of Epicore Biosystems, in the release.

My Skin Track pH is an expansion of L’Oréal’s efforts to deploy new technologies to support skin health. In November 2018, L’Oréal launched a personal UV sensor, My Skin Track UV by La Roche-Posay, exclusively at select U.S. Apple stores and on apple.com.

“This new prototype represents the next step in La Roche-Posay’s beauty tech journey. We are committed to bringing scientific progress directly to consumers, to help them take great care of their skin,” states Laetitia Toupet, global general manager of La Roche-Posay.

My Skin Track pH will initially be introduced in 2019 through select La Roche-Posay dermatologists in the US, with the goal of amassing new research and ultimately launching a direct-to-consumer product, per the release.

[Source(s): L’Oréal USA]