Spanish smart textile in trials for hospitals

Dan Rogers - 20 Apr 2010

A smart textile shirt developed in Spain will be used to monitor hospital patients and could also locate those recovering at home.

Madrid-based company Nuubo is preparing a shirt that could combine monitors of a patient's health with GPS to locate those recovering at home in case of emergency.

The technology is being trialled for European and US market certification, and the company is set to release a commercial version including its monitoring devices within the next year.

Product

Erin Ridley, marketing manager at Nuubo, is working on the commercialisation of the shirt. She states: 'The next 9-12 months is crucial for us, going from innovation to the mass market.

'We intend to release two versions of our product. The core product will include the heart rate monitor, medical quality ECG and activity index, and other features will be added to the second version.'

The smart textile shirt captures data on heart condition and combines this with features such as posture and activity monitors to establish the health of the wearer, while the ability to integrate GPS is one of the elements being developed by Nuubo.

Nuubo is also creating software that captures information from these sensors via a Bluetooth connection and sends feedback to a server or mobile phone.

Alerts

Medical professionals will also be able to set parameters for patients and receive alerts when certain criteria are met, to draw attention to potential incidents.

'For instance, if the patient's heart rate goes below a certain number of beats per minute, an alert could be sent to their doctor,' says Ridley.

Regularly transferred data would also be used to make it easier for medical institutions to keep a record for patients.

Ridley adds: 'We're creating a platform to process this data in an intelligent way, so it's available to the doctor in an easy-to-use format.

'Data would be stored and a patient's progress could be viewed over time.'

The medical-quality ECG monitor and market certification is intended to prepare Nuubo's technology for commercial use in 2011, and the company is in contact with the healthcare industry regarding its first products.

Ridley says: 'A lot of organisations don't have what they need at the moment. We're working together with them to create the best possible solution.'

The company's progress towards commercialisation has been spurred by the ongoing Lobin project, an initiative to create mobile bio-monitoring.