Flexible Intelligent Electrocardiography Jacket Based on Polymer Microengineering

Heart diseases (mainly coronary heart disease) are the second leading killer disease category in Hong Kong since 1960s. About 12 persons per day were died from the coronary heart disease in 2009. Thus, the long-term and efficient measurement of electrocardiography (ECG) for chronic heart disease patients is crucial and inevitable. Considering the market demands and the medical significance, we propose to establish an ECG jacket embedded with the measurement electronics. This ECG jacket appears as regular clothes to record the long-term heart status of patients for tele-health care and medical purposes.From the user perspective, this product has strict requirements on comfort, non-allergenicity and measurement reliability. In the past two decades, polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) has emerged as a typical biocompatible structural material for biomedical microdevices. Indeed, applicability of PDMS can be extended to larger scale as an embedded material for the textile and clothing industries. PDMS can be modified to be electrically conductive by addition of specific nano-particles. This highly controllable yet easily achievable modification process enables PDMS as an interface material between traditional textile products and highly integrated electronic circuits; and this process potentially opens doors for industry of ‘intelligent clothes’ – the functional wearable products that senses human body’s characteristics.