Honors Theses
Date of Award
Spring 5-8-2026
Document Type
Undergraduate Thesis
Department
Biomedical Engineering
First Advisor
Thomas Werfel
Second Advisor
Sushil Mishra
Relational Format
Dissertation/Thesis
Abstract
Hypoglycemia remains a significant safety concern for insulin-dependent individuals, especially when blood glucose declines rapidly during exercise, sleep, or periods of impaired hypoglycemia awareness. Current continuous glucose monitors and automated insulin delivery systems have helped to improve diabetes management, but these technologies primarily respond to glucose trends after they have already started and may not actually provide sufficient warning before symptoms occur. This thesis describes the development of HypoSense, a noninvasive wrist worn wearable concept that is designed to support earlier hypoglycemia risk detection through multimodal physiologic and volatile organic compound emission sensing. HypoSense combines volatile organic compounds/gas sensing with physiological markers, including heart rate variability, electrodermal activity, and skin temperature in order to identify patterns associated with falling glucose. During the senior design project, our team developed a breadboard-based sensing system, created a wearable housing prototype, performed environmental and baseline characterization, and analyzed open-source patient data that contained glucose and physiological measurements. Prototype testing helped to demonstrate measurable volatile organic compound and physiological signal variation under controlled conditions. Patient data analysis showed replicable trends during hypoglycemic events which included an increased heart rate, decreased interbeat interval, and reduction in skin temperature. Future work will focus on wireless integration, personalized calibration, glucose data compatibility, expanded testing in insulin dependent individuals, and regulatory planning for clinical application.
Recommended Citation
Patel, Nidhi R., "HypoSense: Multimodal Physiologic and VOC Wearable for Early Hypoglycemia Detection" (2026). Honors Theses. 3548.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/hon_thesis/3548
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Included in
Biomedical Devices and Instrumentation Commons, Other Analytical, Diagnostic and Therapeutic Techniques and Equipment Commons