Nanotextile Bio-sensors for Mobile Wireless Wearable Health Monitoring of Neurological and Cardiovascular Disorders

Health and long term care is a growth area for wearable heath monitoring systems. Wearable diagnostic and therapeutic systems can contribute to timely point-of-care for patients with chronic health conditions, especially chronic neurological disorders, cardiovascular diseases and strokes that are leading causes of mortality worldwide. Diagnostics and therapeutics for patients under timely pointof-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-silverchloride-gel-electrodes to perform long-term monitoring, non-reusability, lack of scalable-standardized wireless communication platforms, and user-friendly design. Recent progress in nanotextile biosensors and mobile platforms has resulted in novel wearable health monitoring systems for neurological and cardiovascular disorders. This chapter 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 discusses the bioelectromagnetic principles of the origin and propagation of bioelectric signals and nanosensor functioning, which provide a unique perspective on the development of novel wearable systems that harness their potential. Combined with state-of-the-art embedded wireless network devices to communicate with smartphones, laptops or directly to remote servers through a mobile network (GSM,4G-LTE,GPRS), they can function as wearable wireless healthdiagnostic systems that are more intuitive to use. INSTITUTE OF SMART STRUCTURES AND SYSTEMS (ISSS) JOURNAL OF ISSS J. ISSS Vol. 3 No. 1, pp. 28-77, March 2014. REVIEW ARTICLE Available online at www.isssonline.in/journal/03paper04.pdf 28