Disposable health patch

Recording the full story of our health

For decades, doctors mostly based their decisions on snapshots of our health: a blood sample, a quick listen to the beating of our hearts or the breathing of our lungs. 

Yet those unique points in time can be deceptive about our general condition. Long-term monitoring is more reliable, especially under everyday conditions. 

Such long-term monitoring requires a device that’s versatile and reliable, user-friendly and low-cost. And imec has worked out a prototype that meets all these characteristics.

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Powerful and secure data transmission

The disposable health patch is built around imec’s MUSEIC v3: an all-in-one chip that measures all the vital health signs:

• heart rate (ECG)
• breathing rate (bioimpedance)
• blood oxygen saturation (photoplethysmogram)

The collected information is preprocessed on-chip. That significantly reduces the amount of data which is then transmitted to a mobile phone, base station or the cloud through the integrated Bluetooth LE radio connection. 

The transfer is 100 percent secure thanks to dedicated on-chip hardware for encryption and authentication.

Health patch for constant observation

Thanks to the use of printed electronics, dry electrodes and silicone-based skin adhesives, imec’s health patch is comfortable to wear and doesn’t irritate the skin.

Because of the low-power system-on-chip design approach of MUSEIC v3, an unprecedented battery life is achieved on standard batteries.

It’s also fully disposable, because of its low-cost design and non-toxic battery. 

That makes this health patch an ideal solution for ambulatory long-term monitoring. Think about the benefits for chronic patients or people recovering from surgery: they can be checked continuously at home without having to come to the hospital every day. Making their lives easier and their treatments more effective.

Want to build your product from imec’s health patch? 

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