Wearable flexible wireless electronic systems for contactless patient diagnostics

低成本的无线互联网兼容技术正在成为我们生活中不可或缺的一部分。人们可以检索和远程控制办公室、房屋、汽车和家居用品的信息。与此同时，人体的无线实时远程诊断却相对滞后。智能手表等昂贵、耗能且相当笨重的设备占据了市场的主导地位。许多能够显著改善加拿大医疗保健系统和我们的生活质量的应用，都需要轻便、低成本、一次性的诊断产品。为了解决这个问题，我们建议开发可穿戴式一次性诊断系统，用于*非接触式实时诊断人体参数，如体温、心率、血压、湿度/水分水平、深层组织分析等。这些参数将被无线检索，以避免接触身体，这对重症监护患者尤其重要。*我们建议这样的系统由两个主要组件组成：*1)一次性传感器阵列，该阵列将被制造在柔性塑料基板上，并以创可贴的方式附着在人体上，并能够无线传输数据(无源传感器阵列不需要能源，而有源阵列将需要太阳能电池/薄膜电池电源供应的能源)。这些阵列还可以集成到一次性保健产品中，如尿布、绷带等，这将增加它们的价值，因此将对此类产品的加拿大制造商非常有利。我们计划与这些制造商建立合作伙伴关系，将我们的研究成果商业化。*2)能够读取信号、调整信号并转换为数字形式，并将其存储或传输到外部存储(智能手机、笔记本电脑等)的无线阅读器。*此类系统的应用领域包括医院、急诊室、婴儿和老年护理机构。它们也可以用于体育专业人士和体力活动的个人的自我诊断。我们预计，由于加拿大人口老龄化但仍保持体力活动，此类产品的需求将会很高。*拟议的研究活动为研究生提供了一个极好的培训机会，具有高度的实验性，包括电气工程的各种组件，如设备设计和仿真、系统设计、电路设计、设备集成以及制造和测试。滑铁卢大学的千兆到纳米电子制造设施是唯一适合并完全足以执行拟议活动的工厂。*拟议的研究将形成一个基础，在此基础上，可以与加拿大的工业合作伙伴合作开发多种新的保健产品，从而使加拿大工业和社会普遍受益。

Low-cost wireless Internet-compatible technologies are becoming an integrated part of our life. People can retrieve information on andremotely control offices, houses, cars, household items. At the same time, wireless real-time remote diagnostics of human body is lagging behind. The market is dominated by expensive, energy demanding and rather bulky devices such as smart wrist watches. Many applications that can significantly improve Canadian health care system and the quality of our life, require lightweight, low-cost, disposable diagnostics products. To address this issue, we propose development of wearable disposable diagnostics systems for***contactless real-time diagnostics of human body parameters such as body temperature, heart rate, blood pressure, humidity/moisture levels, deep tissue analysis, and more. These parameters would be retrieved wirelessly to avoid touching the body, which is particularly important for intensive care patients.***We propose such a system to consist of two main components:***1) disposable sensor arrays that would be fabricated on flexible plastic substrate and be attachable to human body in a BandAid sticker fashion and would be capable of wirelessly transmitting the data (passive sensor arrays would not require energy source whereas active arrays would require energy source supplied by solar cell/thin film battery source). These arrays could also be integrated into disposable health care products such as diapers, bandages etc., which will add value to them and hence will be highly beneficial to Canadian manufacturers of such products. We plan to establish partnerships to such manufacturers for commercialization of our research results.***2) wireless reader capable of reading the signal, conditioning it and transforming to digital form, and either storing it or transmitting it to external storage (smartphone, laptop, etc.).***Application areas for such systems include hospitals, emergency rooms, baby and elderly care institutions. They can also be used for self-diagnostics by sports professional and physically active individuals. We expect such products to be highly demanded due to aging yet staying physically active Canadian population.***Proposed research activities provide an excellent training opportunity for graduate students, being highly experimental and including various components of electrical engineering such as device design and simulation, system design, circuitry design, device integration and fabrication and testing. University of Waterloo Giga-to-Nanoelectronics fabrication facility is uniquely suitable and fully sufficient to carry out proposed activities.***Proposed research will form a base upon which a multitude of new health care products can be developed in collaboration with industrial partners in Canada and hence strongly benefit Canadian industry and society in general.