Wearable Technology Engineering

Atomically thin semiconductors driving smart sensors with real-world impact Focusing on atomically thin semiconductors at RMIT University, we are creating the next generation of ultra-sensitive sensors and smart systems. They are smaller, faster, and more energy-efficient than ever before. Our innovation begins at the atomic scale. My colleagues and I are engineering two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors such as graphene, transition-metal dichalcogenides, and transition-metal oxides - materials only a few atoms thick yet possessing extraordinary electrical and optical tunability. These quantum-thin layers exhibit exceptional charge-carrier mobility, excitonic behaviour, and mechanical flexibility, unlocking new frontiers in wearable sensors, ultra-fast optoelectronics, and bio-integrated devices. I’m lucky to work in world-class research facilities, which serve as the backbone of innovation, enabling interdisciplinary collaboration across scales, and alongside several national research centres, including the ARC Centre of Excellence in Optical Microcombs for Breakthrough Science (COMBS) . These hubs help connect my research to a global network of experts in photonics, quantum materials, and low-energy electronics. What truly distinguishes our approach is the ability to translate atomic-scale discoveries into intelligent, connected systems. Atomically thin semiconductor devices are being integrated into Internet of Things platforms, wireless communication modules, and AI-assisted signal processors, creating systems that not only sense but also interpret and respond. These platforms enable real-time environmental monitoring, such as detecting trace gases and pollutants, as well as advanced biomedical diagnostics, where bio-field-effect transistors (bio-FETs) and photonic biosensors can identify disease biomarkers at early stages. In the energy and mobility sectors, high-mobility 2D semiconductors are driving low-power electronics and adaptive control systems for sustainable technologies. RMIT’s multidisciplinary engineering ecosystem ensures each layer, from material design to data analytics, contributes to intelligent functionality. A notable example of this multi-layered ecosystem at work is the world-first ingestible gas-sensing capsule, now commercialised by Atmo Biosciences. Incorporating nanoscale sensors, a smart processor, and a wireless transmission module, the capsule measures intestinal gases in vivo and transmits real-time data to reveal insights into gut health. It exemplifies how nanomaterial-enabled sensors can evolve into life-changing medical technologies. By uniting atomically thin materials, smart system integration, and global collaboration, my colleagues and I continue to lead in Electrical and Electronic Engineering research. We are shaping a future where every atom powers intelligent, sustainable, and connected technologies. Interested in collaborating? Get in touch: Jian Zhen Ou - RMIT University

Engineers at Keio University in Japan have developed an extraordinary wearable device known as the "Arque" tail, inspired by the natural mechanics of seahorses. This anthropomorphic robotic appendage is roughly one meter in length and is designed to act as a counterweight, significantly enhancing a person's balance and stability. By mimicking the way animals use tails for agility and center-of-gravity management, the device uses four artificial muscles and compressed air to move in response to the wearer's motions. This technology is particularly aimed at supporting the elderly, helping them maintain their equilibrium during daily activities and reducing the likelihood of losing their footing in various environments. Beyond its primary application for senior citizens, the Arque tail has shown potential for industrial use, assisting workers who carry heavy loads by providing extra stability. The device can be customized to the wearer's body weight by adding or removing vertebral segments, ensuring a personalized fit for optimal performance. While it currently remains a research prototype, it represents a bold leap forward in biomimetic engineering and assistive technology. By blending biology with robotics, these Japanese researchers are providing a unique solution to mobility challenges, demonstrating how creative design can improve the quality of life and physical confidence for individuals in an aging society.

Mayo Clinic has just published some fascinating work on epilepsy that, in my view, marks an important milestone for wearables in healthcare. Their team, led by biomedical engineer Benjamin H Brinkmann PhD, FACNS FAES , showed that an AI-enabled smartwatch can forecast epileptic seizures about 75% of the time with relatively few false alarms 🤯, using signals like heart rate, movement, skin temperature, and conductance. Over 15 months, a parallel implant behind the ear recorded more than 72,000 hours of brain activity and detected 754 seizures, almost twice as many as reported in patient diaries, underscoring how much clinical reality we miss without continuous monitoring. Why does this matter beyond epilepsy? Because it demonstrates that AI can extract clinically actionable insights from real-world physiological data. Long-term continuous monitoring fundamentally changes clinical understanding: it fills the gaps between visits, corrects recall bias in patient-reported data, and opens the door to earlier, more precise interventions. Even when devices are not strictly “medical grade,” their signal quality is now good enough to provide useful, decision-supporting information to the entire care triad: patient – payer – provider. This is exactly the direction I hope our healthcare ecosystems are heading: wearables and sensor-rich environments as complementary infrastructure, continuously feeding risk models, decision support tools, and personalized care pathways. Not replacing clinicians or traditional diagnostics, but augmenting them with a much richer, longitudinal picture of health. At Monterail HealthTech division, we see growing demand from clients who want to integrate wearable data into their platforms, build AI/ML pipelines on top of it, and surface insights directly into clinical workflows. The Mayo work is a strong validation that this is not just “wellness”, it’s the future fabric of healthcare. I’ve been a big supporter of wearables and their influence on human health for years. With results like these emerging from top clinical centers, it feels like we’re finally moving from promise to proof. And that shift will reshape how we design digital health products, how we measure outcomes, and ultimately how we think about staying healthy over the long term.

The future of wearables won’t be “more sensors”. It will be closed-loop: sensing + meaningful feedback… on real skin. This paper “Miniaturization of mechanical actuators in skin-integrated electronics for haptic interfaces” is still one of the cleanest examples of how to do it: shrink the actuator, keep the signal strong, and make it survive real-world motion. What’s impressive isn’t the concept of vibrotactile feedback but it’s the scale and integration: • mini actuators: 5 mm diameter, 1.45 mm thickness • resonance tuned around ~200 Hz (right where skin sensitivity peaks) • a 3×3 array packed into 2 cm × 2 cm — small enough for a fingertip • compliant mechanics: works under stretching, bending, twisting And then they do the part many prototypes skip: an actual functional demo. Braille recognition above 85% (reported average 85.4%). When haptic feedback becomes thin, soft, and dense enough, “touch” turns into a programmable channel, not a gimmick. 👇 Link in the first comment. Curious: if you had a 3×3 haptic array on the fingertip, where would you use it first? Rehab/training, XR, or assistive communication? #haptics #electronicskin #eskin #skininterfacedevices #wearableelectronics #softrobotics #vibrotactile #tactilefeedback #closedloop #humanmachineinterface #hmi #rehabilitationengineering #assistivetechnology #braille #sensorysubstitution #xr #vr #ar #neuroengineering #biomedicalengineering

New in Nature Biotechnology, we discuss the convergence of mass spectrometry and wearable biosensing for noninvasive health monitoring. Biomolecular profiling has traditionally relied on invasive sampling and centralized lab analysis. Meanwhile, wearable sensors enable real-time chemical sensing but currently track only a limited set of biomarkers. In this work, we explore how MS-based molecular discovery and wearable biosensors can complement each other—with untargeted metabolomics and proteomics identifying new biomarkers from accessible biofluids (sweat, saliva, tears, interstitial fluid), and wearable technologies enabling continuous, real-world monitoring. Nature Portfolio Read the paper: https://lnkd.in/gUiCTXvZ Congrats to Moon Ju Kim Jose Lasalde Wenzheng Heng Caltech!

Medical electronics cost 4x more to flex. Not anymore. Chinese researchers created a metal-polymer conductor that bends, twists, and stretches while carrying electricity. For decades, medical electronics forced a choice: rigid and affordable, or flexible and expensive. This material ends that trade-off. What they built: ↳ Gallium-based liquid metal droplets in soft polymer ↳ 2,300 S/cm conductivity at 500% strain ↳ Under 3% resistance change after 10,000 cycles ↳ No detectable toxicity to mammalian cells Stretched five times its length. Ten thousand times. Still working. Here's what stopped me: A young stroke survivor in Beijing needs continuous heart monitoring. Today, that means rigid electrodes digging into skin. Chunky devices she removes because they irritate. Gaps in her data. Gaps in her care. With this material, her cardiologist could apply a thin patch that moves with every breath. A soft sleeve tracking arm rehabilitation. Every reach for a cup becoming data that guides therapy in real time. Fewer hospital visits. Less visible hardware. More freedom — while still being monitored. The clinician's reach extends. The patient's friction disappears. AI diagnostics are getting sharper every month. But they're only as good as the data that reaches them. The Multiplication Effect: 1 patient = continuous data without friction 10 hospitals = rehabilitation transformed 100 clinics = chronic care that moves with life At scale = monitoring patients actually wear Technology finally fits the human body. Now, we decide how fast it reaches patients. Follow me, Dr. Martha Boeckenfeld for Insights on thriving when AI rises, but Leaders stay Human. ♻️ Share with anyone building wearable healthcare. Source: iScience (2018), Physics World, The Chemical Engineer

Our recent study, published in PNAS, introduces a wearable near-infrared patch that employs machine learning to enhance noninvasive muscle-tracking technology. By utilizing the strong light-muscle interaction and deep penetration of near-infrared light, the device addresses key limitations of existing state-of-the-art methods, such as indirect measurements and the need for specialized adhesives. This innovation opens new avenues for monitoring disease progression, assessing treatment effectiveness, and supporting rehabilitation efforts. We are excited to further explore its clinical applications through more clinical trials. Congratulations to Yihan Liu, Arjun Putcha, Gavin Lyda, Nanqi Peng, Salil Pai, Tien Nguyen, Sicheng Xing, Shang Peng, Yiyang Fan, Yizhang Wu, Wanrong Xie! We are grateful for support from National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), National Science Foundation (NSF), and North Carolina Biotechnology Center (NCBiotech). University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill UNC Research Department of Applied Physical Sciences at The University of North Carolina Link to the paper: https://lnkd.in/efdRB2ZY

Georgia Tech researchers are pioneering advancements in wearable technology, tracing the evolution from the groundbreaking "Smart Shirt" in the early 2000s to today's smart textiles that integrate electronics for seamless human-machine interaction. Published January 22, 2026, the piece spotlights work by Georgia Tech engineers, including Professor Sundaresan Jayaraman from the School of Materials Science and Engineering (co-creator of the Smart Shirt) and colleague Sungmee Park. The "Smart Shirt," developed in response to a DARPA call for soldier protection innovations, functions as a "wearable motherboard" by weaving fabric threads as data buses to connect sensors unobtrusively. It collects biometric data like vital signs, detects injuries (e.g., via fiber optics for gunshot wounds), and enables rapid battlefield triage without bulky hardware—designed for comfortable wear under gear and mass production on looms. The article positions this early innovation as foundational to modern wearables that sense, respond, and even heal, foreshadowing broader applications in health monitoring and beyond. “What we have is all these nice data buses that are the fabric threads. And we can connect any kind of sensors to them. We were able to route information in a fabric for the first time, just like a typical computer motherboard. That’s why we called it the ‘wearable motherboard.’” — Sundaresan Jayaraman, Professor, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Georgia Tech This research underscores the transformative value of digital health and wearables by enabling unobtrusive, continuous biometric monitoring that improves healthcare delivery—particularly in high-stakes scenarios like emergency triage—while paving the way for everyday applications in chronic disease management, preventive care, and enhanced quality of life. By seamlessly blending textiles with electronics, it demonstrates how digital tools can make health data collection intuitive, accessible, and life-saving, reducing barriers to real-time insights and supporting proactive, personalized wellness. ——————————————————————————— If you're passionate about digital health, AI, wearables, genomics, and metabolic health, let's stay informed together: you can follow me for updates and join my communities: ➡️ Digital Health (116,000+ members, established 2009) https://lnkd.in/guPW2r-E  ➡️ Metabolic Health (growing rapidly, established 2025) https://lnkd.in/gR9Qu6ez You can also search for the groups by name on LinkedIn or find them linked in my profile. Read the full study here: https://lnkd.in/g-4DSSpE #DigitalHealth #HealthTech #WearableTech #Wearables #AI #SmartTextiles Note: Portions of this post were drafted with the assistance of an AI writing tool and revised by the author for accuracy, clarity, and professional judgment.

Wearable Ultrasound Patch Enables Continuous, Non-Invasive Monitoring of Cerebral Blood Flow. Brief video. University of California San Diego (UCSD). May 22, 2024 Excerpt: Engineers at University of California San Diego have developed a wearable ultrasound patch that can offer continuous, non-invasive monitoring of blood flow in the brain. The soft and stretchy patch can be comfortably worn on the temple to provide three-dimensional data on cerebral blood flow—a first in wearable technology. A team of researchers led by Sheng Xu, a professor in the Aiiso Yufeng Li Family Department of Chemical and Nano Engineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering, published their new technology May 22 in Nature. The wearable ultrasound patch is a significant leap from current clinical standard, transcranial Doppler ultrasound. This method requires a trained technician to hold an ultrasound probe against a patient’s head. The process has downsides. It is operator-dependent, accuracy of measurement can vary based on the operator’s skill. It is also impractical for long-term use. Xu's team developed a device that overcomes these hurdles. The wearable ultrasound patch offers a hands-free, consistent and comfortable solution that can be worn continuously during a patient’s hospital stay. Note: “Continuous monitoring capability of the patch addresses a critical gap in current clinical practices,” said study co-first author Sai Zhou, a materials science and engineering Ph.D. candidate in Xu’s lab. “Typically, cerebral blood flow is monitored at specific times each day, and those measurements do not necessarily reflect what may happen during the rest of the day. There can be undetected fluctuations between measurements. If a patient is about to experience an onset of stroke in the middle of the night, this device could offer information crucial for timely intervention.” Patients undergoing and recovering from brain surgery can also benefit from this technology, noted Geonho Park, another co-first author of this study who is a chemical and nano engineering Ph.D. student in Xu’s lab. Direct link to publication available in enclosed announcement. Nature: 22 May 2024 Transcranial volumetric imaging using a conformal ultrasound patch