Intelligent biomedical clothing for personal health and disease management: State of the art and future vision

Telemedicine has been introduced to overcome distance in order to get prompt access to medical knowledge and appropriate health care. More recently, work in telemedicine has aimed at developing solutions to support the management of chronic diseases such as diabetes, and lung and heart diseases, as well as to provide support for home care services. Telemedicine is also entering the fields of health promotion/prevention disease, life style management, and well-being. The evolution and broadening of telemedicine gives birth to a nomenclature that includes "e-health," "telehealth," and "telecare." The latest developments in microsystems and nanotechnologies as well as in information processing and communication technologies allow miniaturization and non-invasive smart monitoring of physiological and physical data. Ongoing cutting-edge multidisciplinary research in textile fibers, biomedical sensors, and wireless and mobile telecommunications integrated with telemedicine, aims at developing intelligent biomedical clothing (IBC) that could pave the way to support personalized management of health and diseases at the point of need and at any time. In this study, we aim to describe the current status of multidisciplinary research and development of IBC, based on bibliographic research and reports from seminars, workshops, conferences, and working groups. A further aim is to inform the developers, the decision makers, and users in the health and healthcare sector regarding future solutions to support personalized health care and disease management. Both the textile sector and healthcare sector are looking with great interest at the innovative products and applications that could result from the integration of microsystems, nanotechnologies, biomedical sensors, textiles, and mobile telecommunications. For health monitoring, disease prevention and management, rehabilitation, and sport medicine, IBC may offer, in the mid-term future, a unique, wearable non-obtrusive telemedicine platform for individualized services that is readily accessible and of good quality.