When UCI biomedical engineers went to work on creating a sensor for the device, they decided to use Shrinky Drinks. "The current standard of care in respiration monitoring is a pulmonary function test that's often difficult to perform and limited in terms of the snapshot it provides of a patient's respiratory health—meaning problems can sometimes be missed," said Michael Chu, UCI graduate student researcher in biomedical engineering and lead author of a paper on the innovation published today in npj Digital Medicine.