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In the midst of noteworthy innovations in healthcare textiles over this past year, comes the news that the Taliban has now forbidden women to train in midwifery in Afghanistan, where the number of mothers who die in childbirth is amongst the highest in the world. Midwifery was also the last form of education open to girls and women in the country, outside of the Taliban’s religious schools—a human tragedy on so many levels. It stands in stark contrast to the accomplishments of women in the field of healthcare and wellness worldwide. This final feature for Advanced Textiles Source in 2024, will focus on innovations over the last twelve months that have prominently featured women.
Sustainable sensors
Sofía Guridi and research colleagues at Aalto University in Finland have been addressing the environmental impact of e-textiles in their development of fully bio-based and biodegradable e-textile capacitive sensors. Starting from the premise that renewable and biodegradable materials offer significant sustainability benefits over more commonly used non-renewable and toxic plastics and metals, the work explores the potential for e-textile capacitive pressure sensors that are biodegradable and offer ease of disassembly at the end of life.
The sensor combines novel cellulose-based conductive and dialectric materials into a wool and cellulose woven fabric substrate with numerous applications anticipated, including healthcare wearables. The research addresses the development of sensor materials, fabrication techniques, evaluation, and studies on final biodegradability.
In the first textile sensor prototype, some water droplets are applied to the sensor’s back consisting of a carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) layer, a water-soluble polymer based on renewable cellulose that’s attached to a wool fabric. A second prototype introduced the sensor’s core into a woven wool pocket on the textile. In a third, a combination of wool yarns and CMC films have been woven to create a textile pocket where the sensor’s core has been introduced.
These are shown left to right on the above image. WOAMY, a 1mm lightweight wood pulp foam, is used as the dialectric material of the sensor. Research is ongoing, but so far there are positive results from the conductive fibers, but further work needs to be done around biodegradability and to explore the potential for design strategies for disassembly.
Hearing with haptics
Francesca Rosella is one half of London-based Cute Circuit with Ryan Genz. The duo established the brand in 2004 as the first wearable technology fashion brand, with Francesca coming from a heritage in Italy’s couture fashion. Over the years they have developed wearables with haptic qualities as well as luminous display surfaces. Their work often undergoes many iterations as new technologies become available, and in response to creative client briefs.
Earlier this year they refined their SoundShirt™ for use by hearing impaired sports fans during live sporting events. In a commission from Sela, a team sports SoundShirt was created for Newcastle United Football club in the North of England. The shirt works by using conductive textiles and haptic modules that have been integrated into the fabric.
Broadcast microphones capture the sound of the crowd around the football pitch, which is then converted from analog to digital format using a specialized software. The software transforms the crowd noise into touch data that is wirelessly transmitted to the shirt via an antenna in real time. This allows the hearing-impaired wearer to experience the atmosphere at exactly the same time as all the other fans.
An interdisciplinary effort
The SMART ePANTS program from the U.S. Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) with its ambition to make performance-grade, computerized clothing a reality, is just over one year old. It has brought together four teams and over twenty stakeholders that include makers of fibers, flexible batteries, software systems, and wearables designers in a truly interdisciplinary endeavour to advance what is technically possible and scalable in health wearables.
Rebeccah Pailes-Friedman is a wearables designer with the Interwoven Design Group, a multidisciplinary studio specializing in wearable technology, soft goods and smart textiles. While most of the partners are involved on the very high technology aspect, Pailes-Friedman focused on the design, looking at how to make the clothing more user-friendly, comfortable and wearable.
Her perspective is to consider who the users will be, as well as how and why they might want to wear the garment. In a recent interview for Speciality Fabrics Review she said, “Our goal is to develop wearables that are less intrusive and more intuitive … If we can create technology that integrates seamlessly into daily life without being distracting, it will have a far greater impact and usefulness.”
In the goal to make health wearable more commercial and reach a larger audience, this perspective is essential because if the user does not want to wear it, the ability to produce 20,000 units at the flick of a manufacturing switch becomes irrelevant.
Smart garments for children
At the first Wearables Collective Conference and Exhibition, held at the University of California Davis in the spring of 2024, researchers Hafsa Akter and Gozde Goncu Berk from the university presented her research into a smart hospital gown for toddler patients. Ethical considerations of dealing with vulnerable groups unable to voice their consent can often be a barrier to much needed research in the field. With around four million young children admitted to hospital care each year in North America, the hospital gown can play an important role in the toddler’s experience and responsiveness in the alien environment. Akter undertook research across a range of stakeholders that included the children’s parents and caregivers, as well as healthcare professionals.
The work brought to light the very nuanced interpretation of considerations such as “functionality” that starts with the garment being fit for purpose but extends to ease of access for regular monitoring without the need to wake the child. Closeness to regular familiar clothing, thermal, aesthetic and sensorial aspects all featured in responses, and combined to offer an improvement to the patient’s physical and emotional wellbeing during hospital stays.
Hafsa Akter has designed two items of apparel. The first is a novel smart gown that incorporates e-textile-based signal transmission lines to attach devices such as ECG monitoring electrodes. The second is a bootie design for thermal comfort that has an embedded POF-based sensor pulse-oximeter to allow for the non-intrusive monitoring of oxygen saturation levels.
This has been a wonderful year for healthcare and textiles with so many exciting developments. and progress made towards a more sustainable industry, none of which would have been possible without an entitlement to and access to education. While 2024, like all years, has been imperfect, for most of us there is much progress in the industry, for which we can be grateful.
Dr. Marie O’Mahony is an industry consultant, author and academic based in London. She is a regular contributor to Textile Technology Source.