BACtrack

BACtrack
TypePrivate
IndustryConsumer electronics
Founded2001
FounderKeith Nothacker
HeadquartersSan Francisco, California, US
Area served
Worldwide
ProductsBACtrack C6, BACtrack C8, BACtrack S80 Pro, BACtrack Trace, BACtrack Mobile, BACtrack Go Keychain, BACtrack View, BACtrack Skyn
ParentKHN Solutions
Websitewww.bactrack.com

BACtrack is a brand of portable breathalyzers owned by KHN Solutions. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, California, and sells consumer and professional breath alcohol testers along with connected and wearable alcohol-monitoring products.

Company history

BACtrack was founded by Keith Nothacker in 2001, during his senior year at the University of Pennsylvania, when he began selling consumer products online.

In 2004, KHN Solutions received U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) 510(k) marketing clearance for the AlcoMate CA2000 breathalyzer, and was among the first companies to sell breathalyzers to the general public for personal use. The company subsequently received FDA clearances for its own BACtrack-branded devices, including the BACtrack LCD Alcohol Detector in 2007 and the BACtrack Select S30, S50, S70, and S80 models in 2009.

KHN Solutions holds several U.S. patents related to its alcohol-monitoring technology, including patents for wearable and remote intoxication monitoring and for transdermal alcohol measurement.

BACtrack Mobile Smartphone Breathalyzer

The BACtrack Mobile Smartphone Breathalyzer is a pocket-size breathalyzer that pairs with smartphones and other smart devices via an app and Bluetooth LE, producing an estimate of blood alcohol content (BAC) that is displayed on the connected device. Released on 23 April 2013, it was the first smartphone-connected breathalyzer available for commercial purchase.

The accuracy of the BACtrack Mobile has been evaluated in independent testing and found comparable to law-enforcement breath alcohol testers. In a 2015 comparison by The New York Times, the BACtrack Mobile most closely matched a police-grade reference tester among the smartphone units tested.

BACtrack View

BACtrack demonstrated a smartphone-based remote alcohol-monitoring system, BACtrack View, at the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show. BACtrack View uses the front-facing camera of an iOS or Android phone to record a user providing a breath sample with a BACtrack Mobile. The user's BAC result, together with the date, time, and location, is transmitted to a designated recipient for monitoring.

BACtrack Skyn

On 19 May 2016, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) announced that the BACtrack Skyn won the $200,000 first prize in its Wearable Alcohol Biosensor Challenge. The challenge, issued through Challenge.gov in 2015, sought non-invasive wearable technology to improve on existing alcohol biosensors used in the criminal-justice system and in research. BACtrack's entry, the BACtrack Skyn, is worn on the wrist and measures transdermal alcohol content, transmitting readings over Bluetooth to a smartphone app.

Research use

The BACtrack Skyn has been used as a measurement instrument in independent alcohol research. Peer-reviewed studies have evaluated its accuracy, sensitivity, and usability for measuring transdermal alcohol concentration in behavioral and clinical settings, and in 2023 a team of university researchers published and validated open-source code for modeling alcohol consumption from Skyn transdermal data.

Awards and recognition

The BACtrack Mobile Smartphone Breathalyzer won a Popular Science "Best of What's New" award in the Health category for 2013. In a March 2014 Car and Driver comparison test of four handheld breathalyzers, the BACtrack Go Keychain was rated the top performer, matching the more expensive BACtrack Mobile. The BACtrack Skyn was named a finalist in the Consumer Products category of Fast Company's inaugural 2017 World Changing Ideas Awards.

BACtrack Consumption Report

In June 2014, BACtrack released the BACtrack Consumption Report, an aggregation of anonymized drinking data compiled from users of the BACtrack Mobile Smartphone Breathalyzer. The data were compiled over about a year and represented more than 100,000 tests taken in over 35 countries and all 50 U.S. states, including average blood alcohol content by city and state.

References

  1. ↑ Fenn, Donna. "30 Under 30". Inc. Archived from the original on 11 October 2009. Retrieved 6 March 2014.
  2. ↑ Comstock, Jean. "Six attempts at a smartphone-connected breathalyzer". MobiHealthNews. Archived from the original on 17 March 2014.
  3. ↑ Beaver, H. Dennis (9 February 2023). "Student Started Life-Saving Small Business After Seeing a Need". Kiplinger. Retrieved 13 September 2024.
  4. ↑ "510(k) Premarket Notification K041334". U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Retrieved 11 September 2022.
  5. ↑ Anderson, Jon R. (29 March 2013). "What you need to know about the breathalyzer". Military Times. Retrieved 10 September 2022.
  6. ↑ "510(k) Premarket Notification K071067: BACTRACK LCD ALCOHOL DETECTOR". U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Retrieved 16 July 2026.
  7. ↑ "510(k) Premarket Notification K083801: BACTRACK SELECT BREATHALYZER, MODELS S30, S50, S70". U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Retrieved 16 July 2026.
  8. ↑ "510(k) Premarket Notification K090067: BACTRACK SELECT BREATHALYZER, MODEL S80". U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Retrieved 16 July 2026.
  9. ↑ US patent 10631767, "Wearable system and method for monitoring intoxication", assigned to KHN Solutions, Inc.
  10. ↑ US patent 10895568, "Method and system for remotely monitoring intoxication", assigned to KHN Solutions, Inc.
  11. ↑ US patent 11324449, "Method and system for transdermal alcohol monitoring", assigned to KHN Solutions, Inc.
  12. ↑ McGrath, Michael J. (2013). Sensor technologies: healthcare, wellness and environmental applications. Berkeley: Apress. pp. 243–244. ISBN 978-1-4302-6013-4.
  13. ↑ Carr, Austin (22 April 2013). "Can BACtrack become the Nike Fuelband for Alcoholics?". Fast Company. Retrieved 6 March 2014.
  14. ↑ Delgado, M. Kit; Huang, Yanlan; Wanner, Kathryn; et al. (1 September 2017). "39 Test accuracy of smartphone-paired breathalysers: a validation study". Injury Prevention. 23 (Suppl 1): A15. doi:10.1136/injuryprev-2017-042560.39.
  15. ↑ "Turning Your Smartphone Into a Breathalyzer". The New York Times. 21 December 2015.
  16. ↑ "Medgadget @ CES 2018: BACtrack View Breathalyzer for Watching Over Loved Ones". Medgadget. 11 January 2018. Retrieved 3 May 2018.
  17. ↑ "NIAAA selects winners of its Wearable Alcohol Biosensor Challenge". National Institutes of Health. 18 May 2016. Archived from the original on 5 July 2016. Retrieved 4 May 2018.
  18. ↑ "Temporal Dynamics of Transdermal Alcohol Concentration Measured via New-Generation Wrist-Worn Biosensor". Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research. 2019. PMID 31469451.
  19. ↑ "Sensitivity, specificity, and tolerability of the BACtrack Skyn compared to other alcohol monitoring approaches among young adults in a field-based setting". Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research. 2022. PMID 35567595.
  20. ↑ "Acceptability and validity of using the BACtrack Skyn wrist-worn transdermal alcohol concentration sensor to capture alcohol consumption". Alcohol. 2023. PMID 36473634.
  21. ↑ Kianersi, Sina; Ludema, Christina; Agley, Jon; et al. (30 May 2023). "Development and validation of a model for measuring alcohol consumption from transdermal alcohol content data among college students". Addiction. 118 (10): 2014–2025. doi:10.1111/add.16228. PMC 11081732. PMID 37154154.
  22. ↑ Kaplan, Sam. "Best of What's New". Popular Science. Archived from the original on 23 February 2014. Retrieved 6 March 2014.
  23. ↑ Roe, John (18 March 2014). "Ethanol Fueled: Four Handheld Breathalyzers Tested for Accuracy". Car and Driver. Archived from the original on 2 July 2017.
  24. ↑ "Announcing the Winners of the 2017 World Changing Ideas Awards". Fast Company. 27 March 2017.
  25. ↑ Gayomali, Chris (11 June 2014). "Not Drunk? Must Be Tuesday. Here's When We Drink Alcohol, According To BACtrack". Fast Company. Retrieved 12 September 2014.
  26. ↑ Scutti, Susan (11 June 2014). "BACtrack's National Intoxication Report Tells You Which Cities (And States) Drink The Most". Medical Daily. Retrieved 13 September 2014.