'Smart' clothing knows how to monitor health

European scientists are developing a special outfit, capable of monitoring the health of the wearer. In the future, this new technology will be a tool to assist doctors in their treatment.

' Smart ' clothes will be used to check your health (Photo: BBC)

This type of clothing is made from ' smart fabric ' that contains sophisticated sensors to monitor body fluids, such as blood and sweat.

The aim of scientists is to use this 'medical' clothing to check the health of many different subjects, such as patients being treated in hospitals, people with chronic diseases, athletes suffering from Injury, etc. Implemented under the Biotex program worth £ 2.1 million (about US $ 3.7 million), this project involves scientists from 8 research institutes and is funded Partial support from the European Union.

Currently, the effectiveness test of multi-sensor sets is about to be completed. The next step will be to install these devices on fabric and test this special fabric on volunteers.

Speaking to Engineer magazine, Jean Luprano, project coordinator of Swiss CSEM Technology Company, said: 'The sensors have been tested in the laboratory. We are preparing to integrate them into fabric. We will soon have multi-sensor fabric capable of recording multiple information at once '.

The first version of this outfit will be able to track sweat by measuring the acidity, salt, water levels, etc. in the sweat produced by the wearer.

According to the research team, in the future this technology will be able to monitor important changes of the body, assess the progress of wound healing and identify infection or disease status from the onset of How to analyze abnormal factors in the body's metabolism. However, Mr. Luprano stressed that the use of this technology is not intended to replace traditional medical diagnostic methods.

This special fabric will provide the acid, salt . data in sweat.(Photo: BBC)

But according to him, this is a useful means of collecting health data without necessarily going to the hospital. He said: 'In such cases, a tracking system that we can wear on people, even though the accuracy is not very high, still helps doctors have more information during the time when patients stay. out of hospital '.

Mark Outhwaite, head of the remote medical and information specialist group of the British Computer Association, said the sensors will help doctors a lot in their treatment if they provide valuable information. reliable and accurate.

According to him, data that is not highly accurate often only indicates the health trend, not to help confirm a specific health condition, so they cannot help doctors in deciding the method. treatment. However, those data are still useful in situations such as monitoring athletes' health during the practice and competition.

Mr. Outhwaite said the idea of ​​' smart ' clothing was discussed by the US government since the late 1990s as a potential solution to monitor the health of wounded soldiers on the battlefield.

Quang Thinh