Lausanne – April 13, 2017– Nestlé Skin Health, a global leader focused on enhancing quality of life by delivering science-based solutions for skin health, today announced the release of a new application,“Itch Tracker”, which has been developed to collect data on scratching during sleep. It has been designed and validated to leverage the first class accelerometer embedded in the Apple Watch.

“Itch is a major symptom of common dermatological diseases such as atopic dermatitis and dry skin as well as non-dermatological conditions. It often causes a vicious cycle of itch-scratch, and significantly impairs people’s quality of life” said Dr. Akihiko Ikoma, Medical Director, SHIELD Asia Pacific at Nestlé Skin Health and Itch Tracker project leader. 

 “Even healthy individuals sometimes have health issues that cause itch, such as skin dryness, and harmfully scratch during night without recognition.” said Dr. Toshiya Ebata, Director of Chitofuna Dermatology Clinic, Tokyo, and Secretary of International Forum for the Study of Itch (IFSI). “But until now, it has been difficult to evaluate itch objectively. The Itch Tracker is a new and exciting tool for its potential to provide a scratch measurement for everyone as well as provide important data to researchers when used as part of a study soon to be initiated that is designed to investigate the correlation between scratching time during sleep and self-evaluated itch severity.“

In addition to its intended use by individuals to measure their scratching, the Itch Tracker application will be used by scientists to collect and analyze large quantities of data in a form of a study using ResearchKit, which is an open source framework for medical research introduced by Apple.  The Itch Tracker application was developed by the innovation team of Nestlé Skin Health SHIELD (Skin Health Investigation, Education, Longevity Development), which is Nestlé Skin Health’s global innovation initiative to advance the future of skin health.  

“At Nestlé Skin Health SHIELD, the convergence of technologies is at the center of our innovation approach focused on enhancing people’s quality of life”, said Didier Leclercq, Nestlé Skin Health SHIELD Managing Director. “The development of the Itch Tracker application is the perfect example of our capacity to advance the future of skin health by combining cutting-edge technology with our medical and scientific expertise in skin health. In doing so, we are able to meet and even anticipate consumer, patient and healthcare professional needs in dermatology”.

The Itch Tracker application is now available at App Store (application-download service by Apple) for Apple Watch users as a ResearchKit study.

More information about Itch Tracker

Download Itch Tracker on the App Store

About Nestlé Skin Health

Nestlé Skin Health’s mission is to enhance quality of life by delivering science-based solutions for the health of skin, hair and nails. As one of the category’s leading companies, Nestlé Skin Health conducts ground-breaking product research to provide both the healthcare community and the consumer with an ongoing progression of innovative technologies and products to protect, serve and enhance skin health. 

AboutNestlé Skin Health SHIELD

Nestlé Skin Health SHIELD is a global network of innovation and education hubs gathering today’s most creative and visionary thinkers from diverse disciplines to generate, develop and incubate ideas to advance skin health for tomorrow. SHIELD explores creative partnerships, new concepts and technologies to help preserve lifelong skin health, mitigate the emergence of skin conditions and integrate the skin dimension into the organization of age-friendly cities.

Media contact

SébastienCros, Nestlé Skin Health Head of Corporate Communications, info@nestleskinhealth.com