Monitoring Heart Made Easy By A Newly Developed Wearable Device

Up until now, patients with heart problems are usually monitored using electrocardiographic machines. However, due to various limitations, it is extremely difficult to keep an eye out for those patients at all time. Therefore, recently, there has been an arrival of a new technology that would not only allow people with heart problems to be under watch round the clock but also produce a more accurate result. This has been made possible thanks to the material of the wearable device, which is lightweight and stretchy.

In a report made by the Journal of Advanced Science, this wearable device built by engineers using the newest technology of electronic tattoo by Lu. It can be put onto people’s skin to check for several electrical or biochemical responses of the body.

Due to the fact that the device is extremely light and stretchy, it can be stuck onto the skin over the heart for an extended period of time without causing any discomfort for the wearers. Moreover, the device’s is also able to measure the health of the heart by two different methods at the same time, which are electrocardiography and seismocardiography.

These two methods are the two most common forms of cardiac measurement in the medical field with electrocardiography (ECG) being the documenting technique for the ratio of every heartbeat’s electrical activity, and seismocardiography (SCG) being the procedure to measure chest vibrations caused by every beating of the heart.

This electronic tattoo is the very first stretchable and slim machinery instrument to evaluate both SCG and ECG simultaneously using a smartphone as the controller.

As one of the scientists of the research, Lu commented:

Because of the inability of ECG to produce an accurate result of one’s cardiac health on its own, SCG has stepped in with more information in order to complement with the signal recordings provided by ECG. By combining the results from both methods, doctors and scientists can now precisely determine the heart health of their patients using this electronic tattoo device.

Although the concept of ECG sensing e-tattoo is not new, it is innovative when compared with the old model of SCG sensor with its big size and inflexibility.

The electronic tattoo developed by Lu and other scientists is made from a substance called polyvinylidene fluoride, which is a type of piezoelectric polymer capable of creating its own electrical load in reprisal for mechanical stress. Moreover, the device consists of 3D technology of digital image correlation, which is extremely useful in determining the most appropriate location on a patient’s chest to install the tattoo, resulting from the tool’s chest vibrations mapping function.

In addition to all the mentioned benefits of this monitoring device over conventional methods, there is another factor worth acknowledging. As with conventional methods, patients are required to come to a doctor’s clinic or a hospital to get their heart health measured out by the machines for a few minutes per checkup. With this device, people’s cardiac health can now be watched over constantly for a much longer period of time, which could be up to days.