Advanced Materials for Health Monitoring with Skin‐Based Wearable Devices

Abstract

Skin‐based wearable devices have a great potential that could result in a revolutionary approach to health monitoring and diagnosing disease. With continued innovation and intensive attention to the materials and fabrication technologies, development of these healthcare devices is progressively encouraged. This article gives a concise, although admittedly non‐exhaustive, didactic review of some of the main concepts and approaches related to recent advances and developments in the scope of skin‐based wearable devices (e.g. temperature, strain, biomarker‐analysis werable devices, etc.), with an emphasis on emerging materials and fabrication techniques in the relevant fields. To give a comprehensive statement, part of the review presents and discusses different aspects of these advanced materials, such as the sensitivity, biocompatibility and durability as well as the major approaches proposed for enhancing their chemical and physical properties. A complementary section of the review linking these advanced materials with wearable device technologies is particularly specified. Some of the strong and weak points in development of each wearable material/device are highlighted and criticized. Several ideas regarding further improvement of skin‐based wearable devices are also discussed.

Smart Flexible Electronics‐Integrated Wound Dressing for Real‐Time Monitoring and On‐Demand Treatment of Infected Wounds

“…To realize the early detection of the wound status, many physicochemical markers, including temperature, pH, humidity, inflammatory factors, and toxins and enzymes secreted by bacteria, have been used as the indicators . Among these, temperature, which is closely related to the inflammation and infection states at the wound site, is regarded as one of the most important and promising indicators . Abnormal wound‐temperature changes may be selected as an early predictor of infection before any other obvious symptom .…”

“…[1,7] Among these, temperature, which is closely related to the inflammation and infection states at the wound site, [1,19,20] is regarded as one of the most important and promising indicators. [21] Abnormal wound-temperature changes may be selected as an early predictor of infection before any other obvious symptom. [22] To date, diverse tools for body temperature measurement, including infrared thermometers, colorimetric sensors, and electronic temperature sensors, have been developed.…”

Human Action Recognition Using Deep Learning Methods on Limited Sensory Data

“…[4] suggests to follow up betterments of children under rehabilitation and assess them activities that accelerate the treatment process. [5] monitor health of user by wearable sensors. It reviews wearable sensor usage in the mining industry.…”

Wearable Chemosensors: A Review of Recent Progress

“…Unlike traditional invasive methods such as blood tests and fingersticks, wearable chemosensors can provide essential body information conveniently and painlessly in real time. With the rapid development of wearable chemosensors, thus far, they have intensively been investigated in the field of healthcare for the analysis of key physical parameters, such as heart rate, respiration rate, blood pressure, body temperature, blood oxygen, blood pressure, bodily motion, weight, electrocardiogram, and so on . As shown in Figure , wearable sensors depend on wireless materials to establish smart‐body sensors to obtain the physiological information .…”