The OneAir Nanoscale Hazard Detection System leverages groundbreaking technology currently in development at the University of Notre Dame to envision a series of smart healthcare devices capable of identifying health hazards at the atom level. The OneAir Medical breath system focuses on personal health conditions, such as flu, RSV, and Covid-19. Th­e OneAir Environment wall mount system focuses on interior space hazards, including airborne particulates (PM2.5), CO2, CO, NO2, and Mold. The system uses a novel array of nanoscale materials to detect airborne VOCs, and machine learning to distinguish the presence of hazardous biomarkers from environmental noise at high sensitivity and specificity. The combination of deposited materials can quickly be modified to respond to emerging health hazards, and the sensors can easily be swapped out to accommodate evolving healthcare needs. The system enables individuals to quickly identify and respond to personal health conditions and environment hazards, while providing communities with population scale insights to inform public health policies and initiatives.

The symptoms of common health conditions, such as flu, Covid-19, and even environmental pollutants, are often strikingly similar, making it difficult to distinguish between the health conditions we experience. The OneAir Nanoscale Hazard Detection System provides a systems based and modular approach to accurately identify and monitor healthcare hazards at both personal and population scale. The system accommodates two primary use cases, including handheld (breath) and wall-mounted (environment) solutions. The system of modular and swappable sensors allows users the ability to detect a wide range of hazards, and equally important, enables users the ability update their device to respond to emerging healthcare emergencies without the need to purchase a new device. The sensors can be replaced with the most accurate and up-to-date sensor designs (combinations of nanoscale material depositions), because the system does not rely on embedded analysis – analysis takes place in the cloud.

Whereas most systems on the market today are specific and focused, the OneAir system is modular, flexible, and intelligent by design. Through a combination of modular components, including sensors, physical embodiments (electronic devices), and filters, the system can identify a wide range of health hazards and monitor all of them from the convenience of one interactive dashboard.

Ultra-thin nanomaterials provide best-in-class sensitivity, down to the detection of single atoms, and have been shown to detect extremely small quantities of hazardous gasses, viruses, and bacteria, amongst others. The speculative OneAir system is the only systemic nanoscale solution to healthcare monitoring in development today.

User Benefit. The sOneAir system provides personal and population scale healthcare monitoring. Users benefit from personal healthcare monitoring in the home while gaining access to global healthcare trends, providing real-time data and actionable healthcare insights. Users no longer have to guess if they are experiencing real health concerns, and they can make informed decisions related to work, travel, and family.

Establishing the Brand. The development team focused on establishing a design direction that clearly communicated our design principles, including: Simple, Iconic, Transparent, and Nanoscale. These principles guided our decision making regarding formal elements of design including the overall form, material selection, surface finishes, and use of iconography.

Simple: Intuitive physical interactions through form and material selection.

Iconic: Bold design solutions that distinguish the use case and define the brand.

Transparent: User agency through co-creation, education, and choice.

Nanoscale: Precision sensing technology capable of atom-level hazard detection.

The OneAir brand establishes a visually compelling framework for product and service expansion. The material design decisions and iconic forms provide a distinct foundation for a truly novel product category – nanoscale sensing technologies. As a speculative design effort, these design decisions, including the form, color, material, and textures, clearly distinguish OneAir from the soft, often monochromatic formal language offered by air quality products on the market today.

Personal and Population Scale. The power of the OneAir system is its ability to collect and visualize anonymized population scale data for actionable insights – for individuals and for communities. As new healthcare concerns emerge, the inherently modular system can adapt by providing up-to-date sensing matrices trained to detect specific VOC profiles at atom levels. The data is collected locally and the information is visualized globally, empowering individuals and communities to make informed decisions.

Aesthetic Direction. The OneAir visual brand language establishes a compelling framework for communicating value to customers. The soft forms and white surfaces of primary interaction areas communicate ergonomic comfort, sterility, and cleanability. Bright anodized finishes and chamfered edges define the modular sensors, which speak to the accuracy and reliability of the core technology. Translucent materials define the moments in which the product interacts with air particles, a visual nod to the inherent fluidity of airborne particulates. The translucent filters also serve a more utilitarian purpose, as they help visualize collected debris. Users can easily identify when the mouthpiece or large particle filters need to be cleaned. Finally, the overall forms of both the handheld breath and wall mounted environment products create an iconic gesture for a new category of nanoscale sensing technologies, which may prove to dominate the future of advanced sensing and monitoring capabilities.