New dimensions in smart wearable technology

The field of wearable technologies is a novel and promising emerging area that offers a number of benefits to users and healthcare professionals alike, enabling realtime monitoring of diseases, convenience and ease of use. Professor Shuenn-Yuh Lee of the Department of Electrical Engineering at National Cheng Kung University (NCKU), Taiwan, is immersed in this field and working on a project called ‘Guard Patch: An intelligent wearable wireless system with IoT and biosignal acquisition’.

This area of research is becoming increasingly important given the context of a rapidly ageing population and associated considerations of the prolificacy of chronic diseases, growing awareness of cost and emphasis on the importance of health monitoring. ‘Prevention is better than cure is an important concept in healthcare,’ highlights Lee. ‘To economise on the social cost and improve the quality of medical treatment, a platform capable of examination anywhere and anytime by itself should be developed, which can transmit personal examination data to the healthcare centre or hospital via the Internet or wireless communication systems.’

This led Lee to set up a research laboratory – the Communication and Biologic Integrated Circuit (CBIC) Lab – to develop the interactive intelligent healthcare and monitoring system (IIHMS). This system includes a body sensor network (BSN) and a local sensor network (LSN), with the BSN acting as the medium of communication between the wearable devices and the portable facility, and the LSN being the intermediate medium between the portable facility and the healthcare centre.

The full report can be downloaded below.