Abstract-Textile-based sensors offer an unobtrusive method of continually monitoring physiological parameters during daily activities. Chemical analysis of body fluids, noninvasively, is a novel and exciting area of personalized wearable healthcare systems. BIOTEX was an EU-funded project that aimed to develop textile sensors to measure physiological parameters and the chemical composition of body fluids, with a particular interest in sweat. A wearable sensing system has been developed that integrates a textile-based fluid handling system for sample collection and transport with a number of sensors including sodium, conductivity, and pH sensors. Sensors for sweat rate, ECG, respiration, and blood oxygenation were also developed. For the first time, it has been possible to monitor a number of physiological parameters together with sweat composition in real time. This has been carried out via a network of wearable sensors distributed around the body of a subject user. This has huge implications for the field of sports and human performance and opens a whole new field of research in the clinical setting. F. Di Francesco is with the Dipartimento di Chimica e Chimica Industriale, Università di Pisa, Pisa 56126, Italy (e-mail: fdifra@dcci.unipi.it).D. Costanzo and M. G. Trivella are with the Istituto di Fisiologia Clinica, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Pisa 56100, Italy (e-mail: costanzo.daniele@ libero.it; trivella@ifc.cnr.it).P. Salvo and D. E. De Rossi are with the Centro Interdipartimentale di Ricerca "E. Piaggio," Università di Pisa 56100, Italy (e-mail: psalvo@ifc.cnr.it; d.derossi@ing.unipi.it).N. Taccini and R. Paradiso are with Smartex s.r

Proetex is a European Integrated Project dedicated to micro- and nano-technology-based wearable equipment for emergency operators. During the first year of work, a careful analysis of several emergency scenarios has been carried out and has resulted in the design of a complete “smart” uniform for fire-fighters and emergency rescuers. These garments aim at monitoring both physiological parameters, position and posture of the operators and the presence of external potential sources of danger and to send these data to a remote coordinating unit. In the following, the main issues of the design flow will be described and discussed