Electronic Textile Conformable Suit for Distributed Physiological and Physical Activity Monitoring

There is a paradigm shift in the way we provide healthcare, from curing to preventing to constant care, and from hospital-centered to patient-oriented health. We aspire medical technology that is not only accessible, accurate, and comfortable, but can also be functional anywhere and anytime to improve our health and wellbeing. We are continually seeking to find new solutions to deliver healthcare and treat patients with chronic diseases more effectively

The rapid advancement of electronic devices and fabrication technologies has further promoted the field of wearables and smart textiles. However, most of the current efforts in textile electronics focus on a single modality and cover a small area. Here, we have developed a tailored, electronic textile conformable suit (E-TeCS) to perform large-scale, multi-modal physiological (temperature, heart rate, and respiration) sensing in vivo. We introduce a new platform of modular, conformable (i.e., flexible and stretchable) distributed sensor networks that can be embedded into digitally-knit textiles. This platform can be customized for various forms, sizes and functions using standard, accessible and high-throughput textile manufacturing and garment patterning techniques.

The multi-modal, multi-functional framework of E-TeCS would facilitate a new rapid fabrication strategy of personalized telemedicine, especially in low-resource environments and during extreme conditions such as pandemic or natural disaster relief efforts. The modular system-on-textile architecture and novel encapsulation and integration methods enable the realization of robust, washable, and breathable biomedical suits that could perform all sensing needs.

Publications Wicaksono, I., Tucker, C.I., Sun, T., Guerrero, C.A., Liu, C., Woo, W.M., Pence, E.J. and Dagdeviren, C., 2020. A tailored, electronic textile conformable suit for large-scale spatiotemporal physiological sensing in vivo. Nature Flexible Electronics, 4(1), pp.1-13.

Featured in Into the Anthropocosmos, 2021. MIT Press.

Blog Research at Scale, MIT Media Lab, 2020.

Coverage MITnews | TechCrunch | Medgadget | FierceElectronics | InterestingEngineering | TheEngineers | Wearable Technologies | Fiber2Fashion

FastCompany World Changing Ideas Award Finalist, 2021.

MIT researchers have developed a new type of lightweight sensor that can be integrated into clothing for monitoring of vital signs, reports Darrell Etherington for TechCrunch. Etherington writes that the sensors are “machine-washable and can be integrated into clothing that appears totally normal on the outside.”

Full story via TechCrunch