14 DAY TRIAL // European researchers recently managed to tackle the cost problem that prevented medical clothes from entering full-scale production. Vests and belts with sensors for various monitoring tasks have been around for some time now, but reliability and ease-of-use have been two major problems in their implementation on a greater scale.
Bas Feddes, the scientist who coordinated the Context program responsible for this breakthrough, says that his team had to face serious challenges in developing working clothing prototypes, as various technical problems impeded the sensors from working properly. For instance, analysis centers, meant to receive sensor impulses and convert them to readable data, influenced the sensors themselves and caused them to send anomalous readings.
Integrating the electronics into the fabric itself was also a problem that required a great degree of miniaturization. Even then, in order for, say, muscle contraction counters to work, the clothes had to somehow remain fixed to the body, so that their friction with the skin would not alter the results of the reads. Although the Context project resolved this issue to a certain degree, the researchers are not yet fully satisfied with the performances of the data they obtained.
The most important achievement of the European group was the creation of an anti-RSI (repetitive strain injury) vest. RSI accounts for millions of work-related accidents throughout the world and is the main cause for permanent damage done to wrists and joints. The prototype Feddes helped develop can warn wearers to take a break, so as to prevent this type of injury from occurring.
"It is an interesting area with many potential applications and the project partners were very engaged so we got a lot of work done. We would like to pursue other areas together in a future project, if possible, and we will be discussing potential research areas over the coming months," he added, after his team finished their work on schedule and with fewer funds than they had at their disposal.