Abstract
Advances in flexible electronic materials and smart textile, along with broad availability of smart phones, cloud and wireless systems have empowered the wearable technologies for significant impact on future of digital and personalized healthcare as well as consumer electronics. However, challenges related to lack of accuracy, reliability, high power consumption, rigid or bulky form factor and difficulty in interpretation of data have limited their wide-scale application in these potential areas. As an important solution to these challenges, we present latest advances in novel flexible electronic materials and sensors that enable comfortable and conformable body interaction and potential for invisible integration within daily apparel. Advances in novel flexible materials and sensors are described for wearable monitoring of human vital signs including, body temperature, respiratory rate and heart rate, muscle movements and activity. We then present advances in signal processing focusing on motion and noise artifact removal, data mining and aspects of sensor fusion relevant to future clinical applications of wearable technology.
Highlights
The novel field of wearable technology is changing rapidly in recent years and has become an important contender in consumer electronic market
Most important vital signs that are commonly monitored by healthcare professionals include body temperature (T), heart rate (HR), respiratory rate (RR) and blood pressure (BP)
Kim et al [53] reported development of epidermal electronic system (EES), which leads to conformal contact and adequate adhesion based on van der Waals interactions (Figure 7a)
Summary
The novel field of wearable technology is changing rapidly in recent years and has become an important contender in consumer electronic market. The majority of the available wearable products are in the form of smart watches and fitness bands, which can provide consumers with information about activity, body movements and some consumer use vital signs. Despite these successes, the use of wearable devices in real clinical applications has been limited, mainly due to their limited accuracy, validity and reliability [2,3].
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