A Wearable Health Care System Based on Knitted Integrated Sensors

Abstract

A comfortable health monitoring system named WEALTHY is presented. The system is based on a textile wearable interface implemented by integrating sensors, electrodes, and connections in fabric form, advanced signal processing techniques, and modern telecommunication systems. Sensors, electrodes and connections are realized with conductive and piezoresistive yarns. The sensorized knitted fabric is produced in a one step process. The purpose of this paper is to show the feasibility of a system based on fabric sensing elements. The capability of this system to acquire simultaneously several biomedical signals (i.e. electrocardiogram, respiration, activity) has been investigated and compared with a standard monitoring system. Furthermore, the paper presents two different methodologies for the acquisition of the respiratory signal with textile sensors. Results show that the information contained in the signals obtained by the integrated systems is comparable with that obtained by standard sensors. The proposed system is designed to monitor individuals affected by cardiovascular diseases, in particular during the rehabilitation phase. The system can also help professional workers who are subject to considerable physical and psychological stress and/or environmental and professional health risks.

Augmenting human digital memories with physiological data

“…A number of wearable systems [19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28] [29]. The information is then communicated, wirelessly, to a data logger, which the user is wearing.…”

Wearable power Harvester for medical applications

“…Intelligent biomedical clothes combine health problem prevention, comfort, convenience, entertainment and communication with fashion and make everyday life easier (Luprano, 2004). There are numerous research projects on the medical application such as The LifeShirt (Grossman, 2004), SmartShirt (Park, Mackenzie, Jayaraman, 2002), biomedical clothing VTAM (Axisa et al, 2005) and WEALTHY (Paradiso, 2005), MyHeart (Paradiso, Rossi, 2006) and other Dittmar, 2007), (Norgall, Schmidt, Grün, 2004).…”

Properties and Customization of Sensor Materials for Biomedical Applications

“…Some examples are based on the immobilization of enzyme-IL systems with hyaluronic acid (306) or Nafion Ò (307). Ionogels may also assist in the preparation of stable conductive-textile yarns, maximizing contact surface and improving skin adhesion during sweating (32,34,308). This is an attractive proposition for the field of wearable textile biosensors.…”