On-body diagnosis for wearable systems serving biomedical needs.

Early diagnosis as well as a healthy and preventive lifestyle can help slowing the onset of many health problems and save millions of lives per year. To achieve this objective, long-term monitoring of human vital signs are required to obtain knowledge on a person's health status. Continuous monitoring of vital signs is mandatory, but continuous transmission is expensive, in terms of financial costs as well as power consumption for battery operated portable systems. Clothing is like a second skin to us: intelligent biomedical clothes may make everyday life easier for people in poor health, helping them to lead productive lives, senior citizens and also for athletes. Clothing means fashion and fun: smart clothes will combine health problem prevention, entertainment, comfort, convenience and communication with fashion. This paper presents essential issues in wearable electronics, including interface with the garment, signal sensing and enhancement, signal processing of signal combination, on-body diagnosis and on-body and distant communication. The paper reports on experience acquired through related projects running at the Swiss Center for Electronics and Microtechnology.