eScent® was also highly commended in the ‘Rising Tech Star 2015’ category, an innovative company founded by Dr Jenny Tillotson, Winston Churchill Fellow and Visiting Scholar at the Institute of Biotechnology, University of Cambridge.
"We were pleased to have had such a great array of entries in this new category of the Tech Expo Awards calling for examples of innovation in Contextual Technologies," said Ken Blakeslee, chairman of WebMobility Ventures.
"Contextual Technologies are an emerging range of connected sensors and personal wearable devices that detect and analyse conditions that our five senses cannot, and in turn deliver lifestyle and wellness enhancing results to us. In the case of eScent®, dispensing fragrances from a wearable device that mitigates and relieves in response to detected conditions is a real breakthrough and a winning example of the benefits of the emerging Internet of Me." Ken also produced and chaired the day long stream on Contextual Technology at the Tech Expo.
Tillotson is the inventor of eScent®, a highly scalable platform technology that emits micro-doses of mood-enhancing aromas at the right time, in the right place, depending on context. eScent® concentrates on the personal sensory space around the user, it merges clinical aromatherapy with biosensors to create data-driven solutions for wellbeing and preventative healthcare. Embedded discreetly in jewellery and clothing, eScent® forms a localised 'scent bubble' around the face; an area of constant, detectable scent for the user based on a timer, biometric feedback, sound or pre-programmed from a smartphone.
In response to real-time dynamic changes in behaviour, mood, voice analysis and biology (via sweat, body odour, heart-rate, skin response etc.), eScent® dispenses fragrances in short bursts that are relevant to the situation, health condition or context of location, augmenting how we as humans interact with the physical world around us. For example, this could be the release of counteractive wellbeing scents when stress levels are detected, or insect repellent in response to the sound of mosquitoes.
eScent® was also a finalist in the Digital Health Challenge 2015 hosted by INMAR, a leading provider of technology-driven pharmacy management solutions in the USA. During Tillotson’s Churchill Fellowship to the USA, eScent®’s unique ‘scent bubble' was validated by psychiatrists as a prodromal scent intervention that could be used to prevent the risk of a serious mental health relapse (such as bipolar disorder) via the use of stress alleviating and sleep enhancing scents. It can also be used to reduce agitation or encourage appetite in people with dementia, or enhance reminiscence and help recall autobiographical memories from the past.
A former Reader at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, directing projects on Sensory Fashion, funded mostly by the Arts & Humanities Research Council, Tillotson is now working full-time on eScent®, advised by leaders in lab-on-a-chip and biosensors (Professor Andreas Manz,Saarbrücken Germany and Professor Chris Lowe OBE, Director of Institute of Biotechnology, University of Cambridge).
She is creating new scent solutions that offer ‘personalisation’– multiple wellbeing scents in one wearable product, ‘controllability’ – stores and filters personal data and ‘flexibility’ – applies to multiple health problems, or other applications such as fine fragrances for luxury brands retail, sports, entertainment, learning, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality, etc.
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