This was the first time the system was used unsupervised, and it worked beautifully. Applying the patch and getting the photo it turned out to be no issue at all — people thought it looked great, and snapping a photo made a nice mid- or post-workout ritual. The pilot also showed that the best readings came 30–45 minutes into an activity, which informed another round of refinement for the app and the patch. The results are in Gatorade was designed to help serious athletes perform better on the field. There is no shortage of research, largely funded by Gatorade and other sports drinks, to support these claims. To get sweat rate and concentration readings, you 'scan' the patch with your phone's camera from within the app immediately after your workout. The image is interpreted digitally by the software, which looks at the distance the orange line has travelled along its channel to measure your sweat rate. To estimate your sweat sodium losses, the app measures the intensity of the purple color in a separate channel that runs up the side of the patch against reference colours printed on the patch's surface.

It can also leak if some parts of it are missing or not properly fixed like the gasket for example. A missing or damaged gasket can make the content of your bottle leak out.To take advantage of the momentum and maximize growth opportunities, the management of Gx was recently split into two separate units: Digital Ecosystems including Gatorade.com and the Gx App, and Athletic Equipment (non-consumable sweat patches, bottles, coolers). The unexpectedly huge popularity of low-tech bottle personalization (names, colors, teams, numbers), as they became a statement of identity and creativity for athletes. The “ah ha” came when players put masking tape and their names on bottles with their unique formulas during COVID. Baker, L. B. et al. Skin-interfaced microfluidic system with machine learning-enabled image processing of sweat biomarkers in remote settings. Adv. Mat. Tech. https://doi.org/10.1002/admt.202200249 (2022).

Each sweat profile is designed to give you insight into how your body works in a specific environment and intensity. In other words, if I do the same 30-minute incline walk on my treadmill, with my thermostat set to 70 degrees, five days a week, I can use just one sweat profile to inform all of my future 30-minute incline walks. Developing a complex new ecosystem requires patience, slicing tasks into bite size chunks, and designing focused pilots to understand concept pinch points. Early on, it’s important to identify constraints that can affect consumer usage. One study published in 2010 suggests that artificial sweeteners may increase weight when consumed regularly. You may experience leaks when using these bottles due to several factors. It could be leaking if the lid is not properly closed.Baker, L. B. et al. Skin-interfaced microfluidic system with personalized sweating rate and sweat chloride analytics for sports science applications. Sci Adv. 6, 17–19 (2020).

The Gx Platform was developed for pro athletes, but we discovered there was an opportunity in the consumer ecosystem to bring personalized sports nutrition to anyone interested in maximizing their athletic performance. We needed to find a solution that would allow us to democratize lab-based sweat testing, so Smart and Gatorade collaborated with Epicore Biosystems, a company that has developed a proprietary sweat microfluidic sensing platform, to create a single-use wearable patch that analyzes the body’s sweat. Further position Gatorade as a sports science leader, innovator, and brand used by professional athletes Consumers. Informing them through activations, like those done at high schools and the Superbowl, creates excitement that can spread organically via social platforms. But when you think about the kinds of experiences that create a sense of “magic”, they often have that iceberg-like quality: a simple device or interaction with a sophisticated benefit. That’s only possible through tech ecosystems, and those ecosystems get more complex every day. After all, if a team of designers, technologists, and researchers can give a skin patch magical powers…what’s next? About John Anderson, Technology Director The app uses algorithms developed by Gatorade over the past decade or so to estimate total body sweat rate and sodium losses based on sweat collected from a small area of the forearm.

According to SugarScience by the University of California, Berkeley there are more than 300 research articles about sports drinks available. Of these, it is difficult to find research not funded heavily by industry stakeholders, including Gatorade. When these bodies fund research into their own products, reviewers widely regard it as a conflict of interest.