MY HEART
My Heart project [My Heart] is a continuation of the Wealthy project and the aim was to gain knowledge on health status of a large group of people by continuous monitor vital signs using flexible and wearable systems. The results from the monitoring were used to make diagnosis and to detect trends in order to support the citizens to avoid cardiovascular risk factors and help to avoid heart attack and other acute events. For this purpose a set of textile based sensor system were used. One example is a woven fabric with insulated copper wires using the linear dependency of temperature of the wires and their resistance as a temperature fabric. Other type of textile sensors was a press sensing matrix and sensors for the recording of the heart rate and muscle activity.
BIOTEX
The Biotex project [Biotex] can be seen as an extension of the Wealthy and My Heart project with an overall goal to create a garment that monitors biochemical parameters of the wearer. Instead of using conductive materials constructed as sensors a new type of sensors, such as chemical and biosensors were integrated in textile structures. The sensing system consists of patches including textile sensors targeted to measure different body fluids such as blood and sweat was developed and finally integrated in a garment.
MERMOTH
The Mermoth project [Mermoth] is a similar project as Wealthy, contributing to medical remote monitoring of clothes to provide continuous ambulatory monitoring of patients in academic research. The objective was to design a combined textile, hardware and software architecture for a collection of wearable clothes and to build prototype sets of garments as a proof of concept.
OFSETH
While most of the projects, except from Biotex, have been focused on electrical sensors, the Ofseth project [Ofseth] took advantage of pure optical sensing technologies for extending the capabilities of medical textiles in health monitoring. In this project the researchers investigated how measurements of various vital parameters such as cardiac, respiratory rate, pulse oxymetry can be performed using pure optical techniques such as Fibre Bragg Gratings sensors and near infrared spectroscopy. In the projects suitable techniques for processing optical fibers together with textile yarns, for the realization of medical textiles with embedded optical sensors were investigated.