Thank you to our sponsors, Assistant Professor Jae-Woong Jeong and Mentor Graphics!
Nowadays, a wide spectrum of wearable electronic devices aim to provide useful feedback regarding patients’ health conditions. However, the existing electronic packages are often rigid and non-stretchable, whereas the human body is soft, curvilinear and elastic. Therefore, currently available commercial products tend to be uncomfortable, so people have a hard time developing the habit of monitoring their health using such products. It is uncommon to find people who can easily and readily monitor their heart condition and core temperature every day using existing products.
Our product, CardioWear, provides easier everyday health monitoring through ECG (Electrocardiogram) and temperature analysis on a flexible circuit board. Furthermore, CardioWear also archives user’s health monitoring data onto a server, which is connected to the user’s smartphone through the internet.
CardioWear can benefit chronically ill patients or the elderly who desire to closely monitor their own health and fitness needs. Furthermore, the hospitals and the insurance companies can use the product to frequently monitor the recently operated patients. Other potential users include athletes and fitness trainers who wish to check on their vitals during workout.
CardioWear consists of fabric-integrated flexible ECG circuit, which is connected to the fabric-integrated ECG probes through stretchable interconnection wires. The thermistor is also fabric-integrated in the armpits in order to obtain accurate core temperature. The collected data from the surface of the body is transferred to the microcontroller circuit, which is also fabric-integrated. The data is then processed into data packages in order to be transmitted to the user’s smartphone through bluetooth connection. Next, the smartphone uploads the data onto the server where the data is processed to represent correct ECG and temperature signal. Finally, the smartphone application can use the API generated by the server in order to display processed real-time data of the user’s ECG and core body temperature with the processing delay of less than a second. All circuit components will be integrated onto a specially designed island film PCB structure; the film PCB islands interconnected using film serpentine wires, allowing the whole PCB system to be flexible and stretchable.
Key Benefits
- CardioWear is soft, light, and comfortable for daily activities.
- Thermistor can measure core temperature of the body accurately.
- Bluetooth module can transfer real-time data to smartphone with minimal power consumption.
- The smartphone transfers real-time data to the server, and the data is processed to be displayed through webpage.
- CardioWear can be charged using an wireless energy transfer system: the wireless power transfer station sending power to the wireless power receiver situated on the product.
- Smartphone application can update data in real-time for user’s personal health and fitness guidance.
- The users can monitor their vitals using the smartphone application.