Abstract
Telemedicine focuses on improving the quality of health care, particularly in out-of-hospital settings. One of the most important applications is the continuous remote monitoring of vital parameters. Long-term monitoring of biopotentials requires skin-electrodes. State-of-the-art electrodes such as Ag/AgCl wet electrodes lead, especially during long-term application, to complications, e.g., skin irritations. This paper presents a low-cost, on-demand electrode approach for future long-term applications. The fully printed module comprises a polymeric substrate with electrodes on a flexible membrane, which establishes skin contact only for short time in case of measurement. The membranes that produce airtight seals for pressure chambers can be pneumatically dilated and pressed onto the skin to ensure good contact, and subsequently retracted. The dilatation depends on the pressure and membrane thickness, which has been tested up to 150 kPa. The electrodes were fabricated in screen and inkjet printing technology, and compared during exemplary electrodermal activity measurement (EDA). The results show less amplitude compared to conventional EDA electrodes but similar behavior. Because of the manufacturing process the module enables high individuality for future applications.
Highlights
One focus of telemedicine is to provide health care in out-of-hospital settings
Health care expenses can be reduced by gaining vital parameters remotely, without consulting a doctor [2]
This paper demonstrates a first set-up of a pneumatic driven electrode module together with a comparison of screen and inkjet printing on 3D printed substrates to fully additively manufacture comparison of screen and inkjet printing on 3D printed substrates to fully additively manufacture electro-pneumatic functions, which can be further applied for designing e.g., microfluidics components electro-pneumatic functions, which can be further applied for designing e.g., microfluidics such as valves or pumps
Summary
One focus of telemedicine is to provide health care in out-of-hospital settings. To that end, long-term remote patient monitoring, i.e., recording of vital signs like respiratory rate, electrocardiogram (ECG) or electrodermal activity (EDA), and interactive services for patient care have become available in recent years. Dry electrodes have been developed to derive biopotentials without any need for skin and conductive gel by using a benign metal. Some patients developed a metal dry electrodes can generally be assumed to improve patient comfort and ensure long-term applicability. Allergy [8,9], dry electrodes can generally be assumed to improve patient comfort and ensure longHowever, such electrodes have the disadvantages of higher electrode-to-skin impedance, and are term applicability. Various designs have been developed to yield similar (electrical) designs for measuring ECG or electroencephalogram (EEG) signals include needle electrodes [10], properties to wet electrodes. If another measurement is needed, contact can be established the module is fully printed, which carries with it all of the advantages of additive manufacturing, again.
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