Ultra low power flexible electronics for next generation wearable devices

可穿戴技术正在对健康和社会保健产生变革性影响。2019年Topol对NHS数字技术的回顾强调，到2040年，可穿戴设备将影响80%的现有医疗模式。英国国家医疗服务体系的长期计划预测，人们可以毫不费力地在家里监测自己的生理状况，目的是创建一个编程接口，让可穿戴设备直接进入临床工作流程。NHS @home已经为患者提供远程监控设备，以增加家庭护理的使用，实现“虚拟病房”，并提供更个性化的护理。然而，目前的可穿戴设备有很多限制。它们通常由传统的刚性或半刚性电子产品制成，这些电子产品不符合身体，也不随皮肤的运动而拉伸和弯曲。监测的参数侧重于活动和心脏监测等方面，而没有考虑汗液和光照等大量不同的生物标志物。关于数据质量、设备可用性以及数据隐私和安全方面的问题一直存在。这位博士的目标是推进下一代可穿戴设备电子方面的最新技术。这涉及到一个复杂的焦点。首先，柔性电子采用混合集成方法。在这种情况下，传统的微芯片被安装在柔性（通常是塑料）基板上，这样整个设备可以比当前的设备更自由地弯曲和弯曲。这就需要对组件安装方法进行研究，并在这些柔性基板上制作一个完整的系统，包括电池、微处理器、无线连接等。其次，增加仪器以允许测量额外的参数。我们期待探索光暴露、紫外线暴露和电化学汗液传感，根据临床和非临床合作者和共同设计者的观点和需要，权衡在这些不同因素上花费的时间。主要的研究挑战将是在将该仪器移动到微型尺寸时保持低功耗和精度。

Wearable technologies are having a transformative impact on health and social care. The 2019 Topol review of digital technologies for the NHS highlighted wearables as impacting 80% of current models of care by 2040. The NHS long term plan predicts people effortlessly monitoring their physiology at home, with an aim of creating a programming interface to allow wearable devices to feed directly into clinical workflows. NHS @home is already providing remote monitoring devices to patients to increase the use of at home care, enable 'virtual wards', and to provide more personalised care. However, current wearables have a wide number of limitations. They are commonly made with conventional rigid, or semi-rigid, electronics which do not conform to the body nor stretch and flex with movement of the skin. The parameters monitored focus on aspects such as activity and heart monitoring, and do not consider a wide number of different biomarkers such as sweat and light exposure. There are ongoing questions about the data quality, and the usability of devices, together with data privacy and security considerations. This PhD is aiming to advance the state of the art in the electronics aspects of next generation wearable devices. This involves a mixed focus. Firstly, on flexible electronics using a hybrid integration approach. In this, conventional microchips are mounted onto a flexible (typically plastic) substrate such that the overall device can bend and flex much more freely compared to current devices. This necessitates studies in to component mounting approaches, together with work to make a complete system on these flexible substrates, including the battery, microprocessor, wireless connectivity and similar. Secondly, on adding instrumentation to allow additional parameters to be measured. We anticipate exploring light exposure, ultra-violet light exposure, and electrochemical based sweat sensing, trading-off the time spent on these different factors depending on the views needs of clinical and non-clinical collaborators and co-designers. The principal research challenge will be in maintaining low power consumption and accuracy when moving this instrumentation to a miniature form factor.