Smart Shirt

A smart shirt, is clothing made from smart fabric and used allow remote physiological monitoring of various vital signs of the wearer such as heart rate, respiration rate, temperature, activity, and posture.

The LifeShirt by VivoMetrics is claimed{cn} to have been the first commercially available smartshirt, and recorded ECG, respiration using inductance plethysmography, accelerometry, with optional plugin pulse oximetry, GSR, blood pressure, microphone and electronic diary capture. A wide range of companies have now made such clothing. Typical examples often look much more like vests than traditional shirts - under which they're nearly worn. Information from the shirt may be stored locally, or sent to the wearer's doctor, coach, or personal server via a wireless network like Bluetooth, RF, wLAN, or cellular network.

Typical uses include:

• Health monitoring of the unwell or elderly
• Sports training data acquisition
• Monitoring personnel handling hazardous materials
• Tracking the position and status of soldiers in action
• Monitoring pilot or truck driver fatigue

Examples:

• The LifeShirt by VivoMetrics was the first commercially available smartshirt for remote patient monitoring and recorded ECG, respiration using inductance plethysmography, accelerometry, with optional plugin pulse oximetry, GSR, blood pressure, microphone and electronic diary capture.

• Hexoskin is an open data smart shirt for monitoring EKG, heart rate, heart rate variability, breathing rate, breathing volume, actigraphy and other activity measurements like step counting and cadence. Hexoskin allows real-time remote monitoring on smart phones and tablets using Bluetooth.

• The seamless HealthVest (SmartLife Technology) for remote health monitoring uses integrated and integral softsensors to detect changes to the wearer's vital signs in real time. The garments are comfortable to wear and enable monitoring of ECG, Respiration, Temperature, Heartrate in both strenuous and resting states. The HealthVest allows real time remote monitoring in healthcare, sports, hazardous environments and military applications.

• The BioHarness Zephyr Technology allows a remote operator to view vital signs and status such as if someone has fallen over. The Bluetooth radio built in allows the device to communicate with VHF radios for soldiers, police officers or firefighters, to mobile phones for local applications or allows internet connectivity for remote patient monitoring by doctors.

• Respironics developed a system for vital sign data logging and released the system for commercial production in 2003. It consists of a set of miniature, wireless physiological sensors associated with a personal-worn radio-frequency receiver. As of 2009, it supports core body temperature, heart rate, respiration rate and skin temperature.

• Equivital is a proprietary remote physiological monitoring system developed by Hidalgo Limited, a Cambridge, UK based biomedical company. It is an ambulatory, wearable, high performance physiological system providing continuous real time visibility of an individual’s vital signs over a personal Bluetooth network or via a field radio system. These include heart rate, 2-lead electrocardiogram (ECG), respiration rate and effort, skin temperature (multiple locations), core body temperature (ingestible capsule), body orientation, blood oxygen saturation, impact and fall detection. It is used widely by research institutes and universities studying human performance and sports science as well as having applications in military, CBRN, fire fighter, lone worker and telemedicine.

• The BioCapture physiological monitoring system by Cleveland Medical is a wireless, handheld or hip-worn device that can monitor a large variety of configurable physiological signals including ECG, EEG, EOG and EMG, respiration, spirometry, oximetry and more. This physiological monitoring system is used in cardiopulmonary research, neuromonitoring research, EMG testing and other clinical research, as well as sports and psychophysiological applications.