Traditional public health systems are suffering from limited, delayed, and inefficient medical services, especially when confronted with the pandemic and the aging population. Fusing traditional textiles with diagnostic, therapeutic, and protective medical devices can unlock electronic textiles (e-textiles) as point-of-care platform technologies on the human body, continuously monitoring vital signs and implementing round-the-clock treatment protocols in close proximity to the patient. This review comprehensively summarizes the research advances on e-textiles for wearable point-of-care systems. We start with a brief introduction to emphasize the significance of e-textiles in the current healthcare system. Then, we describe textile sensors for diagnosis, textile therapeutic devices for medical treatment, and textile protective devices for prevention, by highlighting their working mechanisms, representative materials, and clinical application scenarios. Afterward, we detail e-textiles’ connection technologies as the gateway for real-time data transmission and processing in the context of 5G technologies and Internet of Things. Finally, we provide new insights into the remaining challenges and future directions in the field of e-textiles. Fueled by advances in chemistry and materials science, textile-based diagnostic devices, therapeutic devices, protective medical devices, and communication units are expected to interact synergistically to construct intelligent, wearable point-of-care textile platforms, ultimately illuminating the future of healthcare system in the Internet of Things era.

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Wearable bioelectronics for continuous and reliable pulse wave monitoring against body motion and perspiration remains a great challenge and highly desired. Here, a low‐cost, lightweight, and mechanically durable textile triboelectric sensor that can convert subtle skin deformation caused by arterial pulsatility into electricity for high‐fidelity and continuous pulse waveform monitoring in an ambulatory and sweaty setting is developed. The sensor holds a signal‐to‐noise ratio of 23.3 dB, a response time of 40 ms, and a sensitivity of 0.21 µA kPa−1. With the assistance of machine learning algorithms, the textile triboelectric sensor can continuously and precisely measure systolic and diastolic pressure, and the accuracy is validated via a commercial blood pressure cuff at the hospital. Additionally, a customized cellphone application (APP) based on built‐in algorithm is developed for one‐click health data sharing and data‐driven cardiovascular diagnosis. The textile triboelectric sensor enabled wireless biomonitoring system is expected to offer a practical paradigm for continuous and personalized cardiovascular system characterization in the era of the Internet of Things.

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The next‐generation wearable biosensors with highly biocompatible, stretchable, and robust features are expected to enable the change of the current reactive and disease‐centric healthcare system to a personalized model with a focus on disease prevention and health promotion. Herein, a muscle‐fiber‐inspired nonwoven piezoelectric textile with tunable mechanical properties for wearable physiological monitoring is developed. To mimic the muscle fibers, polydopamine (PDA) is dispersed into the electrospun barium titanate/polyvinylidene fluoride (BTO/PVDF) nanofibers to enhance the interfacial‐adhesion, mechanical strength, and piezoelectric properties. Such improvements are both experimentally observed via mechanical characterization and theoretically verified by the phase‐field simulation. Taking the PDA@BTO/PVDF nanofibers as the building blocks, a nonwoven light‐weight piezoelectric textile is fabricated, which hold an outstanding sensitivity (3.95 V N−1) and long‐term stability (<3% decline after 7,400 cycles). The piezoelectric textile demonstrates multiple potential applications, including pulse wave measurement, human motion monitoring, and active voice recognition. By creatively mimicking the muscle fibers, this work paves a cost‐effective way to develop high‐performance and self‐powered wearable bioelectronics for personalized healthcare.

Magnetoelastic effect characterizes the change of materials’ magnetic properties under mechanical deformation, which is conventionally observed in some rigid metals or metal alloys. Here we show magnetoelastic effect can also exist in 1D soft fibers with stronger magnetomechanical coupling than that in traditional rigid counterparts. This effect is explained by a wavy chain model based on the magnetic dipole-dipole interaction and demagnetizing factor. To facilitate practical applications, we further invented a textile magnetoelastic generator (MEG), weaving the 1D soft fibers with conductive yarns to couple the observed magnetoelastic effect with magnetic induction, which paves a new way for biomechanical-to-electrical energy conversion with short-circuit current density of 0.63 mA cm−2, internal impedance of 180 Ω, and intrinsic waterproofness. Textile MEG was demonstrated to convert the arterial pulse into electrical signals with a low detection limit of 0.05 kPa,  even with heavy perspiration or in underwater situations without encapsulations.

A light weight, economic, and high–energy density Zn/MnO 2 fiber battery was integrated with a textile body area network.