Neuromorphic chip marks advance in healthcare wearables

Developed by a team at the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME), the device aims to change the way health data is processed. Their findings are published in Matter.

“With this work we’ve bridged wearable technology with artificial intelligence and machine learning to create a powerful device which can analyse health data right on our own bodies,” said Sihong Wang, a materials scientist and Assistant Professor of Molecular Engineering.

Acquiring a detailed profile an individual’s health requires a visit to a hospital or doctor’s surgery. In the future, Wang said in a statement, people’s health could be tracked continuously by wearable electronics that can detect disease before symptoms appear. Unobtrusive, wearable computing devices are one step toward making this vision a reality, the team said.

The future of healthcare that Wang foresees includes wearable biosensors to track complex indicators of health including levels of oxygen, sugar, metabolites and immune molecules in people’s blood. One of the keys to making these sensors feasible is their ability to conform to the skin.