Authors:Vijay K. Varadan, Pratyush Rai, Se Chang Oh and Prashanth Shyam Kumar
Source:FERMAT, Articles, 2016-Vol16-Jul_Aug-005
Abstract: Health and long term care is a growth area for wearable heath monitoring systems. Wearable diagnostic and therapeutic systems can contribute to timely point-of-care for patients with chronic health conditions, especially chronic neurological disorders, cardiovascular diseases and strokes that are leading causes of mortality worldwide. Diagnostics and therapeutics for patients under timely point-of-care can save thousands of lives. However, lack of access to minimally-intrusive monitoring systems makes timely diagnosis difficult and sometimes impossible. Existing ambulatory recording equipment is incapable of performing continuous remote patient monitoring because of the inability for conventional silver-silver-chloride-gelelectrodes to perform long-term monitoring, non-reusability, lack of scalable-standardized wireless communication platforms, and user-friendly design. Recent progress in nanotextile biosensors and mobile platforms has resulted in novel wearable health monitoring systems for neurological and cardiovascular disorders. This chapter discusses nanostructured-textile-based dry electrodes that are better suited for long-term measurement of electrocardiography(ECG), electroencephalography(EEG), electrooculography(EOG), electromyography(EMG), and bioimpedance with very low baseline noise, improved sensitivity, and seamless integration into garments of daily use. It discusses bioelectromagnetic principles of origination and propagation of bioelectric signals and nanosensor functioning, which provide a unique perspective on development of novel wearable systems that harness their potential. Combined with state-of-the-art embedded wireless network devices to communicate with smartphone, laptop, or directly to remote server through mobile network (GSM,4G-LTE,GPRS), they can function as wearable wireless health-diagnostic systems that are more intuitive to use.
Index Terms: textile nanosensor, smart textile, wireless, bioelectromagnetism, ECG, EEG, EOG, EMG, cardiovascular disorder, neurological disorder
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Wearable Technology and Mobile Platform for Human Health Monitoring