Clever Clothes in a Smart World

Pretty soon your gym gear will be more high tech than the groaning treadmill beneath you. Smart textiles and wearable devices can monitor your vital signs as you go about daily life. These clever clothes already exist and look set to find a market niche especially in elite sport and healthcare, say European researchers.

"If I want to monitor a whole body, why not use clothes?" says Danilo De Rossi of Smartex, an Italian firm developing clothes that, according to a recent article in Wired Magazine, do more than look stylish and keep the cold out. Their new line looks great and can keep you healthy and active at the same time.

Tiny sensors woven into the fabric collect information about the wearerÂ’s vital signs (respiration, heart rate, surface and core temperature) and movement, which can be monitored remotely using embedded GPRS transmitters.

And who stands to benefit most from these clever clothes? People with heart conditions or undergoing rehabilitation that require constant monitoring, athletes, newborns and people with sleep apnoea are among the potential users. Coupled with location-based services (LBS), sensitive clothing could also help keep soldiers and emergency crews safe in extreme conditions.

To market, to market
"There are a vast number of applications," Smartex's Rita Paradiso earlier told, "though the garment would need to be customised for each task." Work in the EU-funded Wealthy and MyHeart projects were critical to the prototype garments that her company is hoping to take to market soon, together with Spanish wearable technology firm, WearTech.

The Wealthy prototype is technically very competent, she recently confirmed, but its advantage is in the wearing. "It has to be comfortable, like underwear really, if people are going to use it," she concluded.

Related news articles:

For further information, please visit:

Source: ICT Results

Most Popular Now

Philips Foundation 2024 Annual Report: E…

Marking its tenth anniversary, Philips Foundation released its 2024 Annual Report, highlighting a year in which the Philips Foundation helped provide access to quality healthcare for 46.5 million people around...

New AI Transforms Radiology with Speed, …

A first-of-its-kind generative AI system, developed in-house at Northwestern Medicine, is revolutionizing radiology - boosting productivity, identifying life-threatening conditions in milliseconds and offering a breakthrough solution to the global radiologist...

Scientists Argue for More FDA Oversight …

An agile, transparent, and ethics-driven oversight system is needed for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to balance innovation with patient safety when it comes to artificial intelligence-driven medical...

New Research Finds Specific Learning Str…

If data used to train artificial intelligence models for medical applications, such as hospitals across the Greater Toronto Area, differs from the real-world data, it could lead to patient harm...

Giving Doctors an AI-Powered Head Start …

Detection of melanoma and a range of other skin diseases will be faster and more accurate with a new artificial intelligence (AI) powered tool that analyses multiple imaging types simultaneously...

AI Agents for Oncology

Clinical decision-making in oncology is challenging and requires the analysis of various data types - from medical imaging and genetic information to patient records and treatment guidelines. To effectively support...

Patients say "Yes..ish" to the…

As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to be integrated in healthcare, a new multinational study involving Aarhus University sheds light on how dental patients really feel about its growing role in...

Brains vs. Bytes: Study Compares Diagnos…

A University of Maine study compared how well artificial intelligence (AI) models and human clinicians handled complex or sensitive medical cases. The study published in the Journal of Health Organization...

'AI Scientist' Suggests Combin…

An 'AI scientist', working in collaboration with human scientists, has found that combinations of cheap and safe drugs - used to treat conditions such as high cholesterol and alcohol dependence...

Start-ups in the Spotlight at MEDICA 202…

17 - 20 November 2025, Düsseldorf, Germany. MEDICA, the leading international trade fair and platform for healthcare innovations, will once again confirm its position as the world's number one hotspot for...