Intelligent Fabrics and Clothing Keep Wearers’ Well-Being Monitored

There is a growing market for intelligent clothing that purport to monitor wearers’ well-being, including respiratory and heart rate. The research and development continue and one day these intelligent clothing could monitor a wearer’s vital signs like a doctor on-call.

According to Bennet Fisher these clothing could monitor a person 24/7 outside of a hospital or clinic. Fisher is with CircuiteX, which is the smart fabrics subsidiary of Noble Biomaterials. He said that a general health profile of a person could be provided by the data collected.

 

Conductive yarns

The technology to create the intelligent fabric involves the use of silver. Silver is a conductive material and this is used to manufacture the conductive yarns that are woven into the fabrics. They behave as sensors to discover electrical signals, thus they perform as electromyograms (EMGs) and electrocardiograms (ECG) to measure the activity of muscles and heart rate.

The alternative to being woven is to add silver yarns to tapes or patches that could be sewn to specific parts of the clothing. SmartLife CEO Andy Baker said that it is best placed on garments that fit close to the body for better signal detection. The company recently launched its line of sports bra and T-shirts using intelligent fabrics.

Detectors, such as apps on a tablet or a smartphone could then receive the transmitted signals. The collected information could likewise be sent to a third party, like a doctor or uploaded to the cloud. Baker said that this could revolutionize medical practice. The medical approval for this form of application is still years away although SmartLife is targeting 2017 for its medical use. He said his company is not into diagnostics, but what they are after is the collection and sharing of data for medical practitioners’ use.

 

Initial concept

Intelligent clothing was first envisioned to help athletes while in training, but the use has been extended to benefit the general public’s health. Clothing+, which is based in Finland, SmartLife and CircuiteX are doing trials of shorts, sports bras and T-shirts. They’ve seen the potential of long-term data collected on a person, which could help doctors make better diagnosis, said the head of marketing of Clothing+, Mikko Malmivaara. Adidas and Victoria’s Secret are just two of their clients that are opting to use the technology.

Clothing+ and SmartLife are developing a tomography vest for cardiac patients, to scan lungs for fluid and weakening heart detection. SmartLife is also developing compression bandages. Ohmatex, a Danish company had designed socks for edema monitoring. The company has developed temperature sensors for fire suits to prevent firefighters from getting overheated. The product has been trialed in U.S. academies for firefighters. They are now developing, with the help of the European Space Agency (ESA), smart clothing to monitor the muscle activity and wasting of astronauts in zero gravity. Target for its use in the International Space Station is in 2017.

Image credit: Smartlife