Mobile WellBeing

The Chilean based Company BioDevices recently unveiled Vital Jacket. A wearable vital-signs monitoring system. Is it comfortable yet? Vital Jacket uses microelectronics embedded into a T-shirt that will continuously monitor heart rate and electrocardiogram (ECG) waves of the wearer.

The Vital Jacket joins textiles with microelectronics. It was designed and developed to be a usable pragmatic approach for different clinical and normal life scenarios, in hospitals, home or on the move, that need continuous or frequent high quality vital signs monitoring from the patient or healthy subject. It can be used with fitness, high performance sports, security, and medical applications.

Vital Jacket is currently available in two versions. Users can input heart rate limits and be alerted through a vibration alarm embedded in the T-Shirt when the set limits are exceeded. The system allows signals to be sent directly to a PDA or cell phone.

The Vital Jacket is the first product in the vast concept development line of bio-medical products. BioDevices’ website reports that the original pre-product of Vital Jacket is a system capable of acquiring, storing, and analyzing, both on and off-line, various physiological signs such as ECG, heart rate, breathing, oxygen saturation, activity, posture, and body temperature. Additionally, the garment could be combined with other equipment such as a digital scale, medical dispenser, or blood pressure scanner, with the Vital Jacket functioning as a motherboard.  The data to be sent for analysis, in real time, through secure servers, to a PDA, would utilize wireless technology for subsequent analysis. Physicians would be able to access a monitoring station to receive alerts and bio-analysis.