The Future of Healthcare: Technology on Your Skin
Wearable devices, such as smart stickers, tattoos, or clothing, will conform so nicely to our skin that you will not be able to notice them while they continuously monitor your health.
Would you wear a washable tattoo to monitor your heart rate? How about digital jewelry capable of monitoring your performance at the gym? Does the prospect of such monitoring make you breathe easier or make you nervous?
Whatever your stance might be, wearable technology is poised to become even more ubiquitous than it already is. After all, fitness trackers, such as the FitBit, have already gained enough widespread acceptance among consumers at the most basic level. People of all ages are comfortable using these wearables because they see them as a set of tools that provide valuable information about their health, sleep patterns, and more. In fact, the manufacturing of small sensors and processors used in these devices is exploding so much that the market for wearable healthcare technology is expected to hit an impressive $14.4 billion by 2022.
Skin-tight alliances?
Now the field of wearables is poised for yet another disruption. Recent advances in the fabrication of flexible and stretchable electronics can lead to the development of epidermal electronic devices — a new kind of sensing technology that can be directly worn on the skin. Just as with the fitness trackers, health indicators can be viewed through an app on your smartphone.
Epidermal electronic devices are as simple to apply as a sticker and can conform perfectly well with the texture of our skin. Most users don’t even feel the wearables just a couple of minutes after application. These flexible devices accommodate the stretching of skin during exercising or other routine activities and minimize experimental noise on measurements that might stem from such natural motion.
Purdue University is actively contributing to the development and innovation of these new wearable technologies to improve healthcare, such as wearable and implantable stickers to monitor health status, washable electronic tattoos to measure heart rate, and smart bandages capable of continuously assessing wound conditions and detecting the onset of bacterial infections or pressure ulcers. The development of these skin-like electronic devices include new approaches to power wearable technologies, such as using the energy that we generate by walking. They also feature telemedicine systems that enable wearables to directly communicate with our doctor.
These advances may also help overcome roadblocks encountered by the introductory generation of wearable technologies. For instance, nurses and doctors working at Britain’s National Health Service are not supposed to use wearable technology at work due to the fact that wristbands and smart watches are unhygienic and could facilitate the spread of infections. Additionally, according to recent studies, about one-third of people who acquire a wearable healthcare tracker stop using them within six months because they are uncomfortable or incompatible with their lifestyle.
Will epidermal healthcare devices solve all these challenges? At this rate, it appears so, and will go beyond what we could have even imagined just a few years ago. The verdict is still out on how quickly and widely accepted these new forms will be, but if wearables transition from being somewhat of an accessory to a skin-like device that we hardly even notice, that future may be a lot closer than we think.
