Smart fabric – the stuff of fictional caped crusaders – is now a reality and, increasingly, is showing potential as an aid to living well longer. Agetech World reports.
Smart textiles are the latest incarnation of wearable tech, defined as intelligent textile structures or fabrics that can sense and react to environmental stimuli.
The necessary electronics can be embedded into smart textiles in a variety of ways, such as being knitted or woven directly into the textile, or sewn on after production.
As such, they have a range of uses in a healthcare setting, and, indeed, their employment is on the rise in the sector, being used to sense biometrics such as body temperature, perspiration and pH levels, among others.
As well as detection, smart textiles can also be used to treat pain and monitor patients, which makes them of particular interest in the field of age tech.
Pain relief
Long-term, chronic pain is often cited as the single element that reduces quality of life for elderly people.
Without resorting to over-the-counter or prescribed medicines, which many people are reluctant to rely on, options are limited; could smart tech be the answer? A project at Science Park Borås, the University of Borås, and Karolinska University Hospital, in Sweden, is aiming to find out.
Researchers there are trialling new technology that has been developed, based on therapeutic smart textiles, to make it simpler for patients to manage pain.
The concept behind the innovation is to decrease the effects of impaired muscle strength, mobility, balance, sensitivity or memory from illness or natural causes.
Associate professor Nils-Krister Persson, head of research at the Smart Textiles Technology Lab, explained: “Pain is a cause of many fall accidents among older people. The focus of the project is therefore on fall prevention by counteracting pain in older people. The intention is to make its usage easy for the patients themselves, relatives, and caregivers through the advantage of textiles being naturally present in everyday life, and as textiles are intimately associated with well-being.”
Remote monitoring
As the population grows older, the proportion of those suffering from disabilities caused by ageing and chronic diseases rises.
Across the world, a lack of infrastructure and trained rehab professionals is a growing issue, and one that has only intensified during the pandemic.
Emerging technologies such as telemedicine are helping to address these issues, by providing remote access to healthcare using devices such as smartphones and wearables.
However, what is also needed is technology that can gather accurate data on physiological parameters, including heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature and hormone levels, all in real-life settings.
Earlier this year, Dr Ishara Dharmasena, of Loughborough University’s School of Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering was appointed a Research Fellow by the Royal Academy of Engineering and awarded £500,000 in funding to develop a new technology to meet this need.
For the next five years, his work will focus on creating sensor-containing super-smart textiles that can be used for remote health monitoring.
Absorbing the movement from the body, the textiles will not only power electronic components, but also act as self-powered functional sensors to accurately sense the movements of targeted body parts, which it can then wirelessly communicate to a mobile device.
Supportive suits
Another issue common in the elderly population is muscle weakness, which leaves people frail and more vulnerable to falls.
Scientists from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), in the US, have developed a new type of fabric that is flexible like normal cloth but can stiffen on demand.
The lightweight fabric is 3D-printed from nylon plastic polymers and comprises hollow octahedrons (a shape with eight equal triangular faces) that interlock with each other, similar to the construction of chainmail.
When the fabric is wrapped within a flexible plastic envelope and vacuum-packed, it turns into a rigid structure that is 25 times stiffer or harder to bend than when relaxed.
It is hoped that the development could pave the way for next-generation smart fabrics that can harden to protect a user against an impact or when additional load-bearing capacity is needed.
Potential applications could include wearable support for the elderly, protecting them from the impact of falls and offering increased stability.
Regulating temperature
As we get older, it becomes harder for our body to control its temperature, while a decrease in the amount of fat below the skin makes it harder to stay warm.
Last year, a team of Chinese scientists developed a smart textile that can adapt to different temperature conditions, keeping someone warm when it’s cold and cooling them down when the weather is hot.
The material is described as “a skin-friendly personal insulation textile and a thermoregulation textile that can perform both passive heating and cooling using the same piece of textile with zero energy input.”
While its primary function is to reduce reliance of mechanical heating and cooling, due to their impact on the environment, it also has great potential in the field of elderly care.
