Wearable Sensors for Remote Health Monitoring

Abstract

Life expectancy in most countries has been increasing continually over the several few decades thanks to significant improvements in medicine, public health, as well as personal and environmental hygiene. However, increased life expectancy combined with falling birth rates are expected to engender a large aging demographic in the near future that would impose significant burdens on the socio-economic structure of these countries. Therefore, it is essential to develop cost-effective, easy-to-use systems for the sake of elderly healthcare and well-being. Remote health monitoring, based on non-invasive and wearable sensors, actuators and modern communication and information technologies offers an efficient and cost-effective solution that allows the elderly to continue to live in their comfortable home environment instead of expensive healthcare facilities. These systems will also allow healthcare personnel to monitor important physiological signs of their patients in real time, assess health conditions and provide feedback from distant facilities. In this paper, we have presented and compared several low-cost and non-invasive health and activity monitoring systems that were reported in recent years. A survey on textile-based sensors that can potentially be used in wearable systems is also presented. Finally, compatibility of several communication technologies as well as future perspectives and research challenges in remote monitoring systems will be discussed.

Textile‐Based Strain Sensor for Human Motion Detection

“…However, the optimization of ambulatory and unobtrusive sensing systems is still challenging. To well monitor and investigate human motion, wearable electronics including strain and angular sensors that record information from rotational and sliding joints are essential for reliable posture recognition . In this mini‐review, a novel solution is introduced to solve the abovementioned problems based on wearable textile‐based sensing systems .…”

The impact of the built environment on health behaviours and disease transmission in social systems

“…New digital and communication technologies that are increasingly infusing the built environment, such as the 'Internet of Things', virtual reality, mobile communication devices and cloud servers, are becoming indispensable in understanding and monitoring health issues in both humans and animals. For example, individual health tracking devices are increasingly used to gather physiological and psychological data to monitor individuals' general health or specific chronic conditions [218,219]. Various smart sensors are currently used to improve the quality of indoor environments by gathering data on people's comfort needs and behaviour, both at the individual and at the social scales [183,220,221].…”

Applying Precision Public Health to Prevent Preterm Birth

“…Wearable mobile sensor technologies have been developed for a number of applications requiring real-time monitoring of physiological parameters that allow monitoring of health status/responses and identification of individuals at risk. Examples include remote monitoring of the elderly after transfer to a community care setting (164, 165). Sophisticated systems have been developed and trialed for measuring multiple physiological parameters (166), and it could be envisaged that such systems could be adapted and used in high-risk women to identify changes in uterine activity, for example, suggestive of early onset of labor (164).…”