**Health Care with Wellness Wear**

Hee-Cheol Kim1, Yao Meng1 and Gi-Soo Chung2 *1Inje University, 2Korea Institute of Technology, South Korea* 

#### **1. Introduction**

40 Health Management – Different Approaches and Solutions

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As the new medical practice paradigm of ubiquitous health care has gradually evolved, "smart" clothes with noninvasive sensors that obtain biosignals, such as ECG, respiration, SpO2, and blood pressure data, have great potential (Axisa et al., 2005; Lauter, 2003). We call such clothes "*wellness wear*." A wellness wear system is an integration of biosensors that attach to clothes, digital yarns that transmit biosignals and other data, integrated circuits and microprocessors that process those signals, wired and wireless communication, and software applications that process and analyze vital signs obtained from the biosensors.

The need for wellness wear systems is clear. Wellness wear enables the continuous monitoring of health conditions at any time and place because the clothing is worn continuously. Thus, the use of wellness wear can promote easier home care. Both patients and nonpatients experience efficient and comfortable health care and disease prevention (Saranummi, 2002). This is particularly important because as the aging population increases, the interest in quality of life grows quickly. Undoubtedly, the physical boundaries and distances that restrict doctors' treatments can be reduced. Generally, wearable systems provide real-time feedback about one's long-term health condition, and can even provide alarms in potentially health-threatening situations (Pantelopoulos and Bourbakis, 2010). From an economic point of view, the increasing cost of medicine will be also reduced by the usage of wellness wear because some portion of expensive traditional health-care practices will be replaced.

Despite the need, however, there is not yet a stable market for wellness wear. Additionally, it has not achieved its goal of providing either low-cost or ubiquitous health-care services. One critical reason for this is that biosensors attached to clothes cause motion artifacts; thus, the quality of biosignals may be unreliable. This means that they have not yet been validated clinically. Many sensors can also cause skin irritation or allergies. Further, wellness wear is not of sufficient quality in terms of fashion, usability, and acceptability in consumer culture. There are probably more reasons that wellness wear has not been successful nor actively commercialized; the major reason is likely that wellness wear is still in its infancy. We believe that the currently immature technical, clinical, and cultural aspects of wellness wear will gradually improve, eventually increasing its use.

In this chapter, we shed some light on health care with smart clothes. First, we briefly review previously introduced smart health clothes. Second, as an example, we present a wellness wear system that we are developing that assists with weight loss by using software called the Calorie Tracker, which works together with wellness wear.

Health Care with Wellness Wear 43

1. satisfy the need of wearability (low weight and small size to enable a comfortable

3. incorporate noninvasive biomedical sensors, which allow for biosignal measurements on humans without radiation or infection concerns, to comprehensively estimate and

4. enable real-time processing to facilitate use and track the timing of emergencies, which

5. possess a certain level of intelligence to aid health-care professionals in identifying and

6. acquire biosignals with high accuracy and low distortion and present results with a

7. deploy appropriate security and privacy solutions that mainly focus on data transmission and storage to protect the status information and personal medical data of

8. provide reliable communication channels for transmission of biosignals from the sensors to the system's central node and then from the smart clothes to a remote

9. enable low power consumption to support extended operation times and system

10. enable scalability and reconfigurability to improve system applicability and user

11. undergo testing in clinical situations to demonstrate validity and practicability, the

As one of the most important applications of wearable technology, smart clothes for health care started in early 2000 (Lymberis and Olsson, 2003). Since then, this promising area has attracted much attention from both the research and business communities. In the following two subsections, we review the main achievements from both research and commercial

The VTAMN (Vêtement de Télé Assistance Médicale Nomade—Undergarment for Nomad Medical Tele-assistance) project was supported, in part, by the French government and aims to measure physiological information on the wearer as well as environmental and activity parameters in daily life situations (Fig. 2). Six-lead ECG signals (from 4 textile electrodes), breathing frequency (from 2 coil pneumographs), and ambient and mid-temperature (from 2 I2C temperature sensors) are transmitted automatically or on demand to the remote station using a GSM placed onto the belt. This enables remote detection and tracing of cardiac arrhythmias. The system also incorporates a fall detection module (a 2-axis accelerometer and a microcontroller embedded on an electronic board) to enable an alarm to launch by a cell phone and subsequent rescue to occur with the help of GPS localization. Evaluation has shown simple and comfortable wearing, significant ECG readings, correct breathing frequency and temperature, and functional activity sensing during normal activities. However, some shortcomings also exist, including bulky batteries and electronics and a QRS

2. provide an easy-to-use interface to minimize the cognitive effort of the user;

high degree of reliability to gain the trust of professionals;

medical station (or to a physician's hand-held device);

acceptance, such as adding or removing sensors; and

outcome of which can help to convince stakeholders.

**2.2 Research and development of smart health clothes** 

experience);

the user;

aspects.

miniaturization

**2.2.1 Research prototypes** 

issue (Noury et al., 2004).

could be lifesaving;

addressing health problems

evaluate the wearer's health status;
