Researchers have developed a new way of keeping tab over blood alcohol level. A new wearable tattoo has been designed to analyze sweat as a way to determine the blood alcohol level. The tattoo can then transmit this information to the user's smartphone. The entire process can be completed in as little as eight minutes. The research was funded by The National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB).

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The wearable tattoo is about five centimeters long and two centimeters wide. It is equipped with biosensors for the purpose of measuring the alcohol levels. Seila Selimovic, director of the NIBIB Program in Tissue Chips, said that the tattoo is embedded with a number of flexible wireless components including the one responsible for releasing a chemical for inducing perspiration. This sweat is then analyzed by transmitting electrical current through it.

The tattoo is designed to cut back on instances of drunk driving as well as chronic health problems arising from alcoholism. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 88,000 people in the US die annually from alcohol related issues. It also claimed that excessive drinking accounted for 10 percent of deaths of working adults occurring each year between 2006 and 2010. On the other hand, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says that drunk driving leads to more than 9,900 deaths.

The new technology of testing sweat is a vast improvement from the current devices, which take over two hours for providing results. The tattoo also does not require users to be sweating because it has a  mechanism to generate the required perspiration.