Smart Clothing for Health Care

Abstract

The use of wearable technologies in medicine and health care has become of important in order to considerably improve benefits for patients and health service providers. Within telemedicine, biomedical clothing plays a crucial role. The main technology advances and the research of the Textile and Paper Materials Research Unit (UMTP) and of the Assisted Living Computing and Telecommunications Laboratory (ALLab) teams, in the area, will be addressed. Issues that remain unsolved will be presented. The chapter presents an overview of the key concepts for telemedicine and the role of textile electrodes and their integration in smart clothing. The development of software algorithms that specifically handle signals that are collected using biomedical clothing, integrating resiliency and a proper set of alarms, is presented and discussed in the context of classical biomedical signal processing. Finally, biomedical clothing design will be discussed in social, psychological, and esthetical contexts.