Skin-Interfaced Sensors in Digital Medicine: from Materials to Applications

Abstract

The recent advances in skin-interfaced wearable sensors have enabled tremendous potential toward personalized medicine and digital health. Compared with traditional healthcare, wearable sensors could perform continuous and non-invasive data collection from the human body and provide an insight into both fitness monitoring and medical diagnostics. In this review, we summarize the latest progress of skin-interfaced wearable sensors along with their integrated systems. We first introduce the strategies of materials selection and structure design that can be accommodated for intimate contact with human skin. Current development of physical and biochemical sensors is then classified and discussed with an emphasis on their sensing mechanisms. System-level integration including power supply, wireless communication, and data analysis are also briefly discussed. We conclude with an outlook of this field and identify the key challenges and opportunities for future wearable devices and systems.

Wearable Triboelectric Nanogenerators for Therapeutics

“…Fueled by an unprecedented level of personalized needs, the practice of human healthcare is on the cusp of a revolution [4][5][6][7]. Owing to the prominent penetration potential of the IoT and 5G cellular networks in personalized healthcare, wearable healthcare devices connected to the internet and easily used within households (e.g., wearable sensors and therapeutic devices) can enable point-of-care testing, reduce hospital readmissions, and provide timely, precise, and cost-effective treatment with improved health outcomes [8][9][10][11]. As an indispensable component of personalized healthcare, the advent of wearable therapeutics has opened the race to develop solutions providing on-demand, continuous, quality, and targeted treatments in a nonclinical environment [12,13].…”

Integrated Devices for Non‐Invasive Diagnostics

“…Another important component of the integrated platform is the power unit, the size of which is typically determined by the DMU. Depending on the previous answers to the above‐raised questions, the power demand of the integrated platform can be estimated and a power supply strategy (simple storage, flexible batteries, solar or biofuel cells, hybrid systems [ 5,13,14 ] ) must be chosen.…”

Advanced Materials and Assembly Strategies for Wearable Biosensors: A Review

“…Conventional silicon-based semiconductor devices are essential elements for real-time data processing and data transmission, but these silicon-based semiconductor devices are mostly composed on rigid chips. To solve this problem, the electronic component can be bonded on a rigid chip through micro-or macroscopic structural changes of materials, then, a wearable device can be manufactured through this approach [62].…”

“…When using nanomaterials such as CNT, care should be taken by encapsulating inside the elastic system to prevent potential health problems [86,87]. Advances of biocompatible materials was required to improve breathability and stability for pragmatic use [62].…”