HealthWatch’s hWear washable garments feature sensors that read vital signs, inform doctors about patient health
By David Shamah, Time of Israel
An Israeli company is one of the first in the world to
market with a T-shirt that can read a patient’s heart rate, blood pressure,
cardiac irregularities, and other vital signs that could be the key to
preventing heart attacks. Speed is the key — data is generated in real time and
reaches the doctor immediately, instead of waiting until the next scheduled
exam. And you can throw the special T-shirt in the
laundry with the rest of your clothes.
HealthWatch debuted its
hWear line of 15-lead ECG-sensing garments at the recent annual meeting of the
American Telemedicine Association. It allows doctors and medical workers
to keep track of a heart condition remotely, without having to hook the
patient up to a heart-measuring device in a doctor’s office.
It’s made with standard cotton or synthetic yarn, with
special electrodes woven in that include extremely thin electrocardiogram
sensors that read vital signs and upload them to a monitoring device via
Bluetooth or a Wifi connection to a cloud-based database, where the data is
processed. If anything abnormal is detected, the patient’s doctors can be
alerted, and a treatment protocol can be instituted right away.
“Our hWear T-shirt garments measure the highest
quality vital signs all without adhesives, gels, or shaving preparations for
both men and women. The garments are machine washable and compatible with most
cardiac telemetry systems,” according to Uri Amir, HealthWatch CEO.
Currently, the T-shirts are registered with the FDA as
Class I devices, but the company is applying to have them “upgraded” to Class
II devices, so they can be used in professional medical settings. Only a few
other companies have come out with similar shirts, so HealthWatch is ahead of
the curve, said Amir. “The eHealth, TeleHealth, mHealth, and tele-cardiology
industries can now deploy intensive-care quality telemonitoring without
affecting the lifestyle of their users ranging from patients within a hospital
environment, to homecare settings, to heart attack survivors, to the active
elderly seeking better coverage of their health, or to users wishing to have
direct contact with their expert personal physician from anywhere.”
The T-shirts are designed to work with HealthWatch’s
MasterCaution sensor reader, which provides real-time
Wearable tech is a hot topic now, so much so that
large companies like Intel consider it one of the most important
technologies for the coming years. According to Neil Cox of Intel Europe, “We
expect 500 million wearables to be sold annually by the end of the decade.
We’ve spoken to a lot of companies in recent months and they have a lot of
great ideas on how they would use wearable tech.” Intel sees wearables as
technology that will appeal to a wide variety of people — not just for those
under constant medical supervision.
To that end, the company recently partnered with
Barneys, the New York high-end department store, “to explore and bring to market
smart wearable technology, and to increase dialogue and cooperation between the
fashion and technology industries,” said Ayse Ildeniz, vice president of
business development and strategy at Intel’s New Devices Group. “Through these
initiatives we will combine Intel’s leading technologies with Opening
Ceremony’s design prowess, Barneys New York’s track record to identify the next
consumer trends, and CFDA’s commitment to advance innovation within the fashion
industry. Our shared vision is to accelerate wearable technology innovation and
create products that both enhance peoples’ lives and are desirable to wear.”