Wearable Sensors for Remote Health Monitoring: Potential Applications for Early Diagnosis of Covid‐19

Abstract

Wearable sensors are emerging as a new technology to detect physiological and biochemical markers for remote health monitoring. By measuring vital signs such as respiratory rate, body temperature, and blood oxygen level, wearable sensors offer tremendous potential for the noninvasive and early diagnosis of numerous diseases such as Covid‐19. Over the past decade, significant progress has been made to develop wearable sensors with high sensitivity, accuracy, flexibility, and stretchability, bringing to reality a new paradigm of remote health monitoring. In this review paper, the latest advances in wearable sensor systems that can measure vital signs at an accuracy level matching those of point‐of‐care tests are presented. In particular, the focus of this review is placed on wearable sensors for measuring respiratory behavior, body temperature, and blood oxygen level, which are identified as the critical signals for diagnosing and monitoring Covid‐19. Various designs based on different materials and working mechanisms are summarized. This review is concluded by identifying the remaining challenges and future opportunities for this emerging field.

Skin bioelectronics towards long-term, continuous health monitoring

“…[12][13][14] The collected biometric information offers powerful analysis of a broad spectrum of health status, opening a route for predictive disease prevention, screening, diagnoses, and treatment in a convenient and non-invasive way. [15][16][17] Representative skin bioelectronics are shown in Fig. 1.…”

Lab‐on‐a‐Contact Lens: Recent Advances and Future Opportunities in Diagnostics and Therapeutics

“…The world has seen a significant growing interest in improving the quality of human life, especially against the backdrop of the severe global-spanning impact caused by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, together with other diseases or chronic health risks. [1][2][3][4] With the growing interest in health monitoring, wearable bioelectronic devices have been innovated to enable non-invasive, real-time, and continuous monitoring of physiological signals and biomarkers with little to no interference with users' daily routines. [5] Besides, by collecting and analyzing raw signals and then integrating them into understandable and actionable health knowledge, the wearable bioelectronic platform can significantly enhance the healthcare and information delivery efficiency in a timely, precise, and personalized manner.…”

Transparent stretchable hydrogel sensors: materials, design and applications

“…17,18 It has the advantages of simple preparation technology, 19 good biocompatibility, 20 high viscoelasticity 21 and unique stimulus-response characteristics. 22 Based on these advantages, flexible hydrogel sensors are showing tremendous potential in remote health monitoring, [23][24][25][26] wound healing, [27][28][29][30] drug delivery, 31,32 environmental monitoring, 33,34 human-machine interface, [35][36][37] intelligent robots [38][39][40] and other emerging fields.…”