Abstract
Wearable healthcare devices monitor the condition of patients outside the hospital and hence increase treatment capacity and resources. At the same time, patients benefit from wireless data transmission and conformable device designs, speeding up the rehabilitation process and integration into normal daily activities. Yet, the successful implementation of personalized treatment creates an extensive engineering challenge as devices need to adapt to a vast number of different patients and treatment protocols. Herein, soft building blocks of mobile health (mHealth) devices that reversibly assemble through a magnetic click‐on mechanism are introduced. Fabrication of reliable magnetic connectors with an inherent safeguard mechanism allows the realization of personalized wearable mHealth devices, independent of the (desired) measurement technique. Stretchable elastomer‐based units combined with imperceptible electrodes are protected from overstretching by controlling the opening force of the magnetic connections. The stretchable devices retain both electrical and mechanical functionality for more than 10 000 opening cycles, on par with the standard for universal serial bus type C (USB C) connectors used in consumer electronics. A fully functional and autonomous pulse sensor wristband, assembled from the reliably connecting circuits, demonstrates the feasible implementation for mHealth devices. The plug‐and‐play modularity ensures the applicability independent of a patient's needs, without sacrificing functionality and durability.
Highlights
Wearable healthcare devices monitor the condition of patients outside the hospital and increase treatment capacity and resources
Heart rate, respiration rate, and blood pressure (BP) are the four main vital signs routinely measured by medical professionals, yet the needs of individuals often vary related to activities performed
Bao and co-workers, for example, exploit self-healing materials to achieve modularity of on-skin stretchable electronics, yet their approach still requires the design process to be done in advance, and does not offer plug-and-play modularity able to be performed by patients themselves.[12]
Summary
Wearable healthcare devices monitor the condition of patients outside the hospital and increase treatment capacity and resources. The magnets in the elastomer establish both mechanical and electrical connections between individual units with adjustable hold/release force (Figure 1D) This enables easy fabrication of diverse task-specific units, including power sources, sensors, and communication modules with an inherent safeguard against overstretching of sensible electronic parts. Advantages over near-field communication (NFC) are its longer range, less power consumption, and smaller chip area, which is favorable for stretchable devices.[24] recent advances in directly stretchable circuits are promising,[25,26] the higher integration density provided by conventional integrated circuits (ICs) is still favorable Both modules, sensor and control unit, are powered from a third module, housing a CR927 coin battery with a voltage of 3 V and a capacity of 30 mAh (Figure S2, Supporting Information). Our stretchable pulse sensor demonstrator operates in a plug-and-play manner, exhibiting the modularity and durability as well as the user-friendliness required for personalized, wearable mHealth applications
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