More chips with everything!
A growing public interest in healthy living is driving the emergence of activity monitors, with many devices already available that count steps or calories. Heart rate is a key input in determining activity levels, which is why monitors that can be worn comfortably on the chest offer the greatest accuracy. There is much demand, however, for smaller, lightweight monitors that can flex and move with the body.
Five years ago – around the time of INDEX™ 11 – the first low-cost, patch-based wearable sensor technologies for medical disposables were proposed. Such products allow comfortable, secure and low-profile physiological monitoring and many variants and advances have subsequently been made in this field.
Soft stick-on patches which stretch and move with the skin and incorporate commercial, off-the-shelf chip-based electronics, for example, have been developed by engineers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Northwestern University.
These patches stick to the skin like a temporary tattoo and incorporate a microfluidic construction with wires folded like origami, to allow the patch to bend and flex without being constrained by the rigid electronic components. They could be used for everyday health tracking – wirelessly sending updates to a smartphone or computer – and could revolutionise clinical monitoring such as cardiac and neurological testing, with no bulky wires, pads or tape needed.
Smart bandage
Then there’s the LifeTouch, a new wireless vital signs ‘smart bandage’ that has recently been employed in a collaborative pilot study at the Royal Free Hospital in London to provide continuous remote monitoring of patients with advanced liver disease.
Developed by UK company Isansys, LifeTouch is simple to fit, unobtrusively attaches to the body and is comfortable to wear.
It continuously measures and digitises the ECG signal at a rate four to five times greater than the standard required for ECG monitors and it’s believed could help reduce the number of hospital re-admissions and deaths from liver disease.
A nonwoven footwear insole packed with sensor technology called the OpenGo Therapist, developed by the Munich company Moticon, also has potential healthcare applications.
The product is being used to study impact analysis after leg surgery and to correct the activity of those with walking and posture problems.
Measuring a patient’s distribution of plantar pressure is already standard in orthopaedic care, in addition to in musculoskeletal rehabilitation programmes. Inappropriate biomechanical stress after injuries or surgery can be recorded with the OpenGo sensor insole in an uncomplicated, reliable manner, and convalescence improved as a result.
In addition to health monitoring, such products also have great potential in beauty products.
At present, galvanic skin treatments can only be carried by beauticians using special devices, but a new disposable beauty patch developed at the VTT Technical Research Centre in Finland, promises to let consumers undergo the treatments at home.
The patch generates the current it needs from sugar and air with the help of enzymes. The required electrodes and enzymes are printed onto the fabric and, whilst in use, the electric current generated is minimal, causing no unpleasant sensations for the consumer.
A patent for the product and its manufacturing method has been applied for and in addition to cosmetics, it’s believed the same product and manufacturing method could be adapted to medicinal and herbal products.
Diapers
Last year, a new disposable sensor product that caught the attention of the global media was the Huggies TweetPee introduced by Kimberly-Clark Brazil and tested on its domestic market.
The TweetPee is a small, connected sensing device that attaches to the front of a diaper and alerts parents to when a change is required. With the assistance of a humidity sensor, the TweetPee constantly monitors humidity levels and fires off notifications to a linked smartphone such as “Time to Change”, “Oops, Did a few drops”, and “Everything OK here.”
A further development in this direction was profiled earlier this year by Dr Takao Someya and his team at Tokyo University in Japan, who have developed cheap, disposable sensors that use wi-fi to alert the carer when a diaper is wet.
This is just one possible application of the prototype technology – described as the world’s first wireless organic sensor system that’s flexible.
“The mechanical flexibility of electronic devices is very important to open new applications in medical and healthcare because current devices are all made of hard materials,” says Dr Someya.
New York company Pixie Scientific is also proposing smart diapers that contain patches which can reveal signs of urinary tract infections, prolonged dehydration or developing kidney problems.
The patches contain reagents which interact with leukocytes (cells made by the immune system) and nitrites (by-products of bacteria). They also have reagents that measure electrolyte concentration (a measure of hydration), and pH (alkalinity).
These reagents react with urine and produce measurable colour changes. At the same time, they are non-toxic and never come into direct contact with the skin – as they are incorporated into the topsheet of the diaper.
Neuroscience
Perhaps the most intriguing development in this general area comes from a California company called Thync, which is preparing to launch an entirely new category of wearable products based on advanced neuroscience.
The idea is to harness neurosignalling algorithms – waveforms that signal neural pathways – to shift and optimise the state of mind of the wearer in areas related to energy, calm and focus.
Thync’s technology platform comprises neurosignaling algorithms, hardware, software and biomaterials. The company says it is integrating the most advanced aspects of neuroscience and consumer electronics into headsets to give individuals access to their own capabilities, without the need for chemicals or supplements.
The electrodes have been made comfortable by improved biomaterials, and Thync’s brain stimulation technology has already been tested on more than 1,500 people in 4,000 sessions.
“We created Thync to help people better access the power of their mind,” said Thync CEO and co-founder Isy Goldwasser. “For the first time, we are able to target and optimise neural pathways and brain circuits for personal benefit. Thync technology converges on many of these same pathways to achieve positive effects.”
In the run-up to INDEX™ 17 – the next edition of the major nonwovens show which takes place at Palexpo in Switzerland from April 4th-7th that year – we can expect to see many more new developments in the integration of nonwoven materials in sensor technologies.
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