In an article call Flexible Technologies and Smart Clothing for Citizen Medicine, Home Healthcare, and Disease Prevention,

the authors explore the potential abilities for smart clothing to improve the quality and efficiency of healthcare both at home and in the hospital [A]. As the majority of the population gets older there is a need for more efficiency, higher quality, and lower cost care. For chronic patients, intelligent biomedical clothes empower the user to better understand and self-manage the disease state [A]. Early detection can limit the occurrence of acute events and complications that may lead to hospitalization and extended hospital treatment [A]. Patients with a reoccurring disease such as diabetes could use the smart clothing to monitor the glucose levels in the blood. This would be a new noninvasive unlike the current needle pricking or continuous glucose monitors that is surgically implanted. Hopefully, these areas are where smart clothing can be applied. As electronic technologies become increasingly miniaturized smart clothing has been able to emerge. Battery capacity is a major issue but just as components become smaller, power consumption by components becomes smaller as well [A]. The Georgia Institute of Technology has used woven optical fibers as sensors [A]. These sensors can be used to pick up the electrical signals produced by the body, such as heart rate and temperature. In the laboratory of the authors, they developed a smart and flexible sensor that analyzed parameters around a permanent peritoneal dialysis catheter [A]. The patient can use this sensor at home each morning and is portable [A]. If an infection were present then an alarm would be sound [A].

Figure ___: The sensor that was designed to monitor infection around a permanent peritoneal dialysis catheter. While this may not be a sensor seen above in figure__ cant be woven into fabric, it gives the patient ease of not having to go into the hospital constant check up. Hopefully soon smart clothing can replace this larger sensor and could continuously monitor the if catheter. But this is a step in the right direction because it provides patients freedom from hospitals. The next article looked at Telemedicine, which has been introduced to overcome distance in order to get prompt access to medical knowledge and appropriate health care [B]. According to this article, telemedicine has aimed at managing chronic diseases such as diabetes, and lung and heart diseases [B]. Cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death and early disability worldwide. These sensors would reduce the need to go into the hospital for these disease or could catch a heart problem sooner. Continuously monitoring the patients health would drastically change response time to any problems. This would inevitable increase the probably of recovering from such a diseases.

The article then goes on to talk about the possibility of smart clothing in diabetes monitoring. While there are already continuous glucose monitors that tell the patent when to take insulin.

Figure ___: The continuous glucose monitor that is currently on the market.

In figure__ above the glucose monitor is very invasive. It has to be inserted into the body and can get pulled on if not careful. Research in smart clothing to bring together the required physiological measurement, telecommunication and drug delivery functions could lead to a unique platform for enhanced personal diabetes management [B]. It could possible remove the invasiveness and monitor from the outside of the body. This article does not gone into how these sensors are technical possible but it does talk about the goal of the smart clothing is. As this field continues to expand, it will surely be able to do much more than we have previously thought. For health monitoring, disease prevention and management, rehabilitation, and sport medicine, smart clothing may offer, in the future, a unique, wearable non-obtrusive telemedicine platform for individualized services [B].

[A]

F. Axisa, P. M. Schmitt, C. Gehin, G. Delhomme, E. McAdams, and A. Dittmar,

Flexible technologies and smart clothing for citizen medicine, home healthcare, and disease prevention., IEEE transactions on information technology in biomedicine: a publication of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 325-36, Sep. 2005. [B] A. Lymberis and S. Olsson, ANDREAS LYMBERIS, Ph.D., and SILAS OLSSON,

M.Sc., Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare, vol. 9, no. 4, 2003.