Fashion companies have been toying with the digital health market for quite some time now. However, most of them launched special versions of existing products; that’s not the case with L’Oreal which wants to get involved on a “deeper level.”

The company’s dermatological skincare brand, La Roche-Posay, used CES to unveil a device called My UV Patch, which is dubbed the first-ever stretchable skin sensor designed to monitor UV exposure and help consumers educate themselves about sun protection.

The 50 micrometer-thick sensor (half the thickness of an average strand of hair) measures approximately one square inch in area and can be applied to any area of skin that consumers want to monitor. Inside, it packs photosensitive dyes that factor in the baseline skin tone and change colors when exposed to UV rays to indicate varying levels of sun exposure.

Once the patch changes color, consumers take photo of it and upload it to the La Roche-Posay My UV Patch mobile app that determines the amount of UV exposure the wearer has received. The application will work with the iPhone and Android-based devices, incorporating Near Field Communication (NFC) to further simplify the process, at least for users with NFC-enabled phones and tablets.

“The key was to design a sensor that was thin, comfortable and virtually weightless so people would actually want to wear it,” Guive Balooch, Global Vice President of L’Oreal’s Technology Incubator, said in a statement. “We’re excited to be the first beauty company entering the stretchable electronics field and to explore the many potential applications for this technology within our industry and beyond.”

My UV Patch was developed by L’Oreal’s U.S.-based Technology Incubator and MC10, which has developed the stretchable electronics technology. L’Oreal also worked with PCH who design engineered the sensor.

The My UV Patch along with the companion app is expected to be made available to consumers later this year.