Smart wearable systems for personalised health management: current R&D and future challenges

Abstract

Remote health monitoring has the potential to improve the quality of health services and to reduce the total cost in healthcare by avoiding unnecessary hospitalisations and ensuring that those who need urgent care get it sooner. In conjunction with cost-effective telemedicine platforms, remote health monitoring can significantly contribute to the enhancement of disease prevention, early diagnosis, disease management, treatment and home rehabilitation. Latest developments in micro-and nanotechnologies as well as in information processing and wireless communication offer, today, the possibility for smart miniaturisation and noninvasive biomedical measurement as well as for wearable sensing, processing and communication. Although developing specific systems and applications to address specific user needs, the "smart health wearable" research and industrial community faces a number of common critical issues, e.g. biomedical sensors, scenarios of use data security and confidentiality, risk analysis, user interface, medical knowledge/decision support, dissemination, user acceptance and awareness, business models and exploitation. Beyond technology, which seems providing proof of concept, future challenges such as clinical validation and impact assessment of the newly developed smart wearable applications, are ahead. In addition, cutting edge development combining functional clothing and integrated electronics open a new research area and possibilities for body sensing and communicating health parameters. This paper review the current status in research and development of smart wearable health systems and applications and analyse the outstanding issues and future challenges.