It’s not your father’s heart-rate monitor. Wearable, stretchable electronics can now monitor several body functions and instantaneously send the information to a doctor. 

 

Here are more details on how the implications could be huge for patients in sickness and in health. 

 

Bill Winkler runs for fitness and to keep his two heart problems in check. He has cardiomyopathy and atrial

fibrillation. 

 

Bill says, “it tends to make me a little more tired and when I’m in atrial fibrillation, I feel a lot worse than with the cardiomyopathy.”

 

He has an implanted defibrillator, which tracks his heart and can shock it back into rhythm, and a heartrate app on his phone. 

 

 “It will tell you at the end whether you’re in AFib or normal,” he says.

 

However, information gets to his doctor later. 

 

 Marvin Slepian, associate department head of biomedical engineering at the University of Arizona said, “we’ve been able to create a new class of materials that we call stretchable electronics.”

 

Slepian figured out how to put thin electronics into materials that move with the body. This bio stamp sends metrics on heart rate, movement and more to an iPad in real time.

 

“If the patient is wearing this, we can track that and we can actually see decompensation, which may occur even before they wind up in the hospital,” Slepian says.

 

He also developed a catheter and balloon with a thousand sensors to detect atrial fibrillation, and then fix it in minutes. It’s all good news to Bill.

 

“Knowing that all the vitals are being watched would be very reassuring,” he says.

Slepian is working in collaboration with researchers at the University of Illinois, Tufts, and Northwestern.

 

They’ve also developed a wearable sweat sensor that can track electrolytes and hydration. It could be used for athletes and for soldiers in the field.