Nano- Bio- Textile Sensors with Mobile Wireless Platform for Wearable Health Monitoring of Neurological and Cardiovascular Disorders

Neurological disorders, cardiovascular diseases and strokes are leading causes of mortality worldwide. Diagnostics and therapeutics for patients under timely point-of-care can save thousands of lives. However, lack of access to minimally-intrusive monitoring systems makes timely diagnosis difficult and sometimes impossible. Existing ambulatory recording equipment are incapable of performing continuous remote patient monitoring because of the inability of conventional silver-silver-chloride-gel-electrodes to perform long-term monitoring, non-reusability, lack of scalable-standardized wireless communication platforms, and user-friendly design. Recent progress in textile-based nanosensors and mobile platforms has resulted in novel wearable health monitoring systems for neurological and cardiovascular disorders. This review paper discusses nanostructured-textile-based dry electrodes that are better suited for long-term measurement of electrocardiography(ECG), electroencephalography(EEG), electrooculography(EOG), electromyography(EMG) and bioimpedance with very low baseline noise, improved sensitivity and seamless integration into garments of daily use. It presents bioelectromagnetic principles, of origination and propagation of bioelectric signals and nanosensor functioning, which provide a unique perspective on development of novel wearable systems that harness their potential. Combined with state-of-the-art embedded wireless network devices to communicate with smartphone, laptop or directly to remote server through mobile network (GSM,4G-LTE,GPRS), they can function as wearable wireless health- diagnostic systems that are more intuitive to use. (C) 2013 The Electrochemical Society. All rights reserved.