Wearable health systems: From smart technologies to real applications

The interest in wearable health systems (WHS) originates initially from the need to extend health services out of the hospital and monitor patients over extensive periods of time. Intelligent WHS are integrated systems in contact with or near the body able to sense, process and communicate biomedical, biochemical and physical parameters – and even carry out actions if necessary. Research and development (R&D) in WHS is mainly driven by two different, but complementary, approaches. The first one is "application-pull," stemming from an increased user demand for new solutions in healthcare. The second one is "technology-push," in which technological innovations lead to new systems and products for healthcare solutions. In both approaches, inter-disciplinarity is a key issue. Synergies across multiple domains like biomedical technologies, micro- and nano-technologies, materials engineering, and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), enable new approaches to support personal health and well-being. These include, for example, unobtrusive personal health monitoring and point-of-care biochemical testing for disease prevention and early diagnosis, as well as follow-up of treatments. This article presents the state-of-the-art on wearable health systems, outlines current research achievements and indicates research trends and challenges in line with these two approaches.