Material witness

An EU-funded consortium is developing intelligent textiles to measure the health of athletes, diabetics or people working in extreme conditions.
The bio-sensing textile for health management, or Biotex project, will integrate bio-chemical sensor capabilities into textiles to continuously monitor the biochemistry of the user.

Researchers from eight institutions and companies across four countries are developing electric, electrochemical and optical sensor systems that will be embedded into a textile to create sensing patches. These will monitor fluids such as blood, sweat and urine of the wearer throughout the day.

So far, developments in intelligent textiles and health monitoring have mainly focused on physiological measurements such as body temperature, breathing, heart rate and heart regularity. Applications have therefore been targeted at sports and those at risk from a heart attack.

Sweat analysis is potentially a rich source of health-related information but testing is seldom performed because of the difficulty of collecting a sufficiently large fluid sample. Changes in the body of the wearer will be detected using optics, electrochemistry and electricity, through impedance monitoring.
As well as being able to carry out analysis, any garments created must also have good antibacterial qualities.