BIOTEX – Bio-sensing textiles for healthcare

Chemical analysis of body fluids non-invasively is a novel and exciting area of personalised wearable healthcare systems. BIOTEX was an EU FP6 project that developed wearable textile sensors to collect and analyse sweat in real-time. A textile patch has been designed in such a way that it can successfully collect sweat from human subjects during exercise. The patch uses the inherent capillarity of fabrics to transport sweat through a fabric channel with integrated sensing capability. A super-absorbent ma-terial at the end of the channel is used to draw the fluid through the chan-nel and store waste products. This provides a passive pumping action re-quiring no external power. Sensors integrated into the fabric channel measure sweat pH, sodium concentration and conductivity. In addition physiological measurements including respiration and ECG are measured using piezo-resistive fabric and textile electrodes respectively. A thoracic blood oxygenation sensor has also been developed using a woven fibre optic configuration. A central control unit is used to interface the sensors and transmit data via Bluetooth to a graphical user interface displayed on a nearby laptop for analysis