Beauty product developer L’Oréal has made an unexpectedly big splash in the world of wearables at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show.

(image via MC10)

The company has developed a thin adhesive patch designed to track UV exposure on the user’s skin. It’s called My UV Patch, and it measures at about one square inch, with a thickness of only 50 micrometers—”half the thickness of an average strand of hair”, as the company put it in a statement. The patch’s sensor is heart-shaped and features a pixellated blue-and-white design.

The patch is stretchable, allowing it to be worn comfortably almost anywhere on the body, and it uses photosensitive dyes to track UV exposure. A user needs only to take a picture of the patch and upload it to the My UV Patch mobile app to have its UV data analyzed; it’s available on iOS and Android, with the latter platform allowing for scanning via NFC.

The patch was developed in collaboration with Irish design firm PCH and MC10, a digital healthcare solutions developer specializing in flexible wearable sensors. Given L’Oréal’s prominence in the beauty industry, and that My UV Patch will reportedly be offered free this spring, it should offer all three partners considerable exposure.

Sources: The New York Times, Wired