Key Takeaways:
Smartwatches, fitness trackers, and rings have become far more sophisticated since their debut in the late 1970s, when these devices merely monitored heart rates. After the turn of the century, Apple and Fitbit were among the device makers that advanced wearables technology to track steps, calories burned, sleep patterns, and biometrics, including blood pressure.
Advancements in wearable devices are expanding to track the health of the body’s largest organ—the skin. Yet, there are essentially no skincare-monitoring wearable devices that are widely available to consumers, though large cosmetics companies and universities, including Northwestern University and the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), have been exploring these technologies.
One of the more recent innovations on this front comes from South Korean beauty brand Amorepacific, which was recently named a CES 2026 Innovation Award Honoree in the beauty tech category for the company’s Skinsight technology. The system centers on an ultra-thin wearable sensor patch that detects micrometer-level changes in aging-related factors like skin tightness, UV and blue light exposure, temperature, and moisture. The data is then transmitted via Bluetooth, and an artificial intelligence–powered mobile app analyzes the skin-aging data and can propose personalized skincare recommendations.
While Skinsight isn’t yet a commercially available product, a spokesperson for Amorepacific told BeautyMatter that the technology “opens the door to efficacy validation driven by real-world data, expanding beyond subjective user evaluations or limited clinical studies.”
According to Amorepacific, the diagnostic and evaluation technologies that are integrated into Skinsight are currently used throughout the company’s development process—from early research through formulation design and testing—and have “already contributed to product development for our key luxury brand Sulwhasoo,” the spokesperson added. Amorepacific’s Skinsight technology was used to test Sulwhasoo’s First Care Activating Serum to substantiate its efficacy in improving skin tightness.
The Challenges of Wearables
Experts say that recent advancements in AI are expanding the role that wearable technologies can play in measuring skin parameters like UV exposure, humidity, hydration, and redness, and over time could even potentially make diagnoses related to conditions like eczema or acne. But today, “we’re very limited with what the technology can do,” said Dr. Nithin Reddy, board-certified dermatologist at virtual dermatology platform Tono Health, in an interview with BeautyMatter.
Several years ago, beauty giant L'Oréal generated headlines when it debuted the wearable electronic La Roche-Posay My Skin Track UV to measure UV exposure. The $60 device, which had a wire clip that could be attached to clothing, was sold for several years by Apple but is no longer available to consumers. The wearable was also distributed to US dermatologists for clinical research. A L'Oréal spokesperson told BeautyMatter that La Roche-Posay My Skin Track UV’s technology is still being leveraged by the research and development team as they test and explore future innovations.
“From a technological perspective, you need a sensor that’s able to measure the hydration of the skin, and there are some tools that exist out there that can do that,” said Reddy. “The big question is: can you put it into a small device?”
Reddy added that there is wide variability in some conditions like inflammation. And to measure those properly, technologists will need to develop skincare devices and train AI on the proper data to assess redness across a wide array of skin tones.
Then, researchers need to sort out how to translate all of the data into an approachable format. “You’re going to need both improvement in the hardware to actually get the data, and then you need improvement in the AI to take that data and make it translate into something meaningful for us,” added Reddy.
As the American population ages rapidly, demand for wearable monitoring devices will likely increase and help bolster the already fast-growing US dermatology industry, which recorded $10 billion in revenue in 2025, according to market researcher IBISWorld. IBISWorld estimated that the compound annual growth rate for dermatology will be 3.1% from 2025 through 2030, an acceleration from 2.8% growth between 2020 through 2025.
“What’s interesting is that the wearables for skin, in convergence with other data sets from a ring or your watch around other vital signs connected to sleep or stress, that combination with AI is going to be the next-gen total health picture,” predicted Jonathan Baker, a partner with the healthcare and government solutions team at accounting giant KPMG, in an interview with BeautyMatter.
From the Lab to IRL
But before consumers can count on buying skincare monitor systems as easily as a smartwatch that tracks their steps or heart rate, the technologies in development will need to advance out of the academic setting. Amorepacific, as an example, co-developed Skinsight with researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Jeehwan Kim, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT who worked on the project, told BeautyMatter that the collaboration was critical to bridging the gap between lab-scale materials and research breakthroughs, and how those technological advancements in an academic setting can be manufactured externally at a commercial scale.
“That said, the science is still evolving in areas such as long-term reliability on skin, large-scale statistical validation across diverse populations, and the integration of multimodal sensors with advanced analytics,” says Kim.
He adds that further development of the technology isn’t limited to technology feasibility, but rather by the future work needed to ensure skincare wearable monitor systems can move beyond the research setting to practical, real-world use.
Researchers at UCLA are on a similar, parallel path, recently unveiling an AI-enabled wearable sensor prototype that can diagnose allergic contact dermatitis, an itchy rash caused by direct contact with a substance to which a person has an allergic reaction.
An estimated 20% of the human population suffers from these allergic reactions, but these allergens can be difficult to diagnose. Frequently, patients spend days to weeks testing various creams or oral treatments before the right cure is found. An AI-enabled sensor could make it easier for a dermatologist to monitor progress on a daily basis from afar. And in the future, diagnosis by AI models could even outpace what human dermatologists can ascertain with their own eyes.
“That’s why wearable and implantable sensors are a very exciting area, especially for chronic patients and aging patients,” said Aydogan Ozcan, a professor at UCLA and lead inventor of the California university’s AI wearable sensor. “But we need better technologies that are going to be safer, quantitative, and accurate.”