"This health monitor has a key advantage for young children who are always moving, since the soft conformal device can accommodate that activity with a gentle integration onto the skin," said Woon-Hong Yeo, an assistant professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. "This is designed to meet the electronic health monitoring needs of people whose sensitive skin may be harmed by conventional monitors."
Because the device conforms to the skin, it avoids signal issues that can be created by the motion of the typical metal-gel electrodes across the skin. The device can even obtain accurate signals from a person who is walking, running or climbing stairs.
"When you put a conventional electrode on the chest, movement from sitting up or walking creates motion artifacts that are challenging to separate from the signals you want to measure," he said. "Because our device is soft and conformal, it moves with the skin and provides information that cannot be seen with the motion artifacts of conventional sensors."
Yeo and his collaborators, including first author and postdoctoral fellow Yun-Soung Kim, are focusing on pediatric applications because of the need for ambulatory monitoring in children. However, they envision that the health monitor could also be used for other patient groups, including older adults who may also have sensitive skin. For adults, there would be additional advantages.
"The monitor could be worn for multiple days, perhaps for as long as two weeks," Yeo said. "The membrane is waterproof, so an adult could take a shower while wearing it. After use, the electronic components can be recycled."
Two versions of the monitor have been developed. One is based on medical tape and designed for short-term use in a hospital or other care facility, while the other uses a soft elastomer medical film approved for use in wound care. The latter can remain on the skin longer.
Because the monitor can be worn for long periods of time, it can provide a long-term record of ECG data helpful to understanding potential heart problems. "We use deep learning to monitor the signals while comparing them to data from a larger group of patients," Yeo said. "If an abnormality is detected, it can be reported wirelessly through a smartphone or other connected device."
Fabrication of the monitor's circuitry uses thin-film, mesh-like patterns of copper that can flex with the soft substrate. The chips are the only part not flexible, but they are mounted on the strain-isolated soft substrate instead of a traditional plastic circuit board.
As next steps, Yeo plans to reduce the size of the device and add features to measure other health-related parameters such as temperature, blood oxygen and blood pressure. A major milestone would be a clinical trial to evaluate performance against conventional health monitors.
For Yeo, the prospect of seeing the device in clinical trials - and ultimately used in children's hospitals - is a powerful incentive.
COMPAMED-tradefair.com; Source: Georgia Institute of Technology