Telemedicine has the potential to become a basic requirement for the wider populace, hospitals, patients with serious illnesses, and various emerging infectious (viral/bacterial) diseases.1 Especially when people are in-home care (quarantine)2, allowing them to seek real-time guidance on their health problems via communication with a healthcare expert. For instance, when the SARS-CoV-2 virus spread quickly over the world, the greatest concern was a shortage of beds to accommodate the sick patients who really needed to be taken care. Telemedicine, also known as remote healthcare system (RHS), is the only option to control the issue.3,4 It is especially crucial to keep track of patients with mild symptoms who are subject to quarantine at home. RHS is typically composed of three main components: sensor unit, power unit, and data processing and transmission unit.5,6 The sensing device monitors various human bio-signals and converts them into electrical signals that are wirelessly transmitted to the cloud or mobile for assessment.
Herein, we have developed a flexible fabric-based remote healthcare system simultaneous integrating power supporting supercapacitor and strain/temperature detection. The asymmetric supercapacitor (SASC) is constructed on stretchable fabric and has a maximum operating voltage of 1.6 V, by using MXene (Ti3C2Tx) and FePS3@rGO composition as the negative and positive electrodes, respectively (Figure 1a). Advantages of the integrated nanoarchitectonics and advanced electrode design, the optimized SASC exhibited a high storage capacity, flexibility, mechanical stability, good stretchability, and so on. Moreover, the strain sensor made by using FePS3@rGO composition has a high gauge factor of 38.7 (R2 = 0.96) at 40% strain and response time. According to our knowledge, FePS3 was used for the first time in the flexible and stretchable energy storage device and strain sensor.
As we all know, when a person becomes infected with a virus or flu, their body temperature and breathing pattern change first. Therefore, here we developed a breathing band containing an integrated FePS3@rGO strain sensor with tandem SASC (Figure 1b). This one-of-a-kind integrated fabric healthcare system can be placed directly on the human abdomen to accurately measure a user’s breathing cycles. We successfully monitored breathing rates during physical activities (eg., sitting, jogging, and running), breathing states (eg., normal breathing, fast breathing, shallow breathing, and slow breathing), and three different volunteers. Furthermore, we have achieved a temperature sensing patch by integrating a temperature sensor with SASC, which can measure abnormal body temperatures and be worn in a smartphone via wireless communication (Figure 1c). The present research shows the new proof-of-concept for integrating an energy storage device and sensors into a single stretchable fabric for the next-generation wearable healthcare system.
For further information, please read our paper “Telemedicine platform for health assessment remotely by an integrated nanoarchitectonics FePS3/rGO and Ti3C2-based wearable device” published in npj Flex. Electron. 6, 73 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41528-022-00208-1
References
[1] Bingham, J. M. et al. Addressing the need for a telehealth readiness assessment tool as a digital health strategy. J. Am. Pharm. Assoc. 62, 1524-1527 (2022)
[2] Sicari, S. et al. Home quarantine patient monitoring in the era of COVID-19 disease. Smart Health 23, 100222 (2022).
[3] Al Bassam, N. & Hussain, S. A., IoT based wearable device to monitor the signs of quarantined remote patients of COVID-19. Inform. Med. Unlocked 24, 100588 (2021).
[4] Monaghesh, E.; Hajizadeh, A. The Role of telehealth during COVID-19 outbreak: a systematic review based on current evidence. BMC Public Health 20, 1193 (2020).
[5] Khan, Y. et al. Monitoring of vital signs with flexible and wearable medical devices. Adv. Mater. 28, 4373-4395 (2016).
[6] Chen, X. et al. Stretchable supercapacitors as emergent energy storage units for health monitoring bioelectronics. Adv. Energy Mater. 10, 1902769 (2019).
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