Digital Duds: The mHealth Wearable Market Looks to Sensor-Embedded Clothing

The mHealth wearables industry has long been focused on activity bands and watches, even jewelry and smartglasses. Often overlooked is the concept of sensor-embedded clothing, but that form factor is now seeing interest from care providers who want a better way to monitor health on the move.

At Modesto Junior College in California, Jamie Derollo, an athletic trainer and the school’s director of sports medicine, is using a sensor-embedded sleeve to help athletes recover from injuries. The sleeve, developed by Denver-based Cipher Skin, helps her track arm movement and design a care plan around mobility exercises.

But that sleeve offers more opportunities. Along with tracking motion, the sensors gather biometric data that is then integrated into a telehealth platform, allowing care providers like Derollo to track not only physical performance but clinical outcomes.

“I’m just getting started, but there are a lot of possibilities with this,” she says. “It gives me insight and data that I haven’t had before.”

Derollo uses the sleeve to track upper extremity extension, rotation and other motion mechanics, as well as oxygen saturation and heart rate. It’s ideal for helping Baseball, softball, tennis and volleyball athletes recovering from arm injuries. Stretched further, these mHealth wearables could be used to track recovery from leg injuries, or even back and neck concerns.

And the form factor fits in perfectly.

“It’s real-life for the patients,” she says. “You wear it like you’d wear a normal piece of clothing. For most sports, you’re not allowed to have watches or jewelry, so this is ideal.”

Derollo sees the potential for this technology beyond recovering from sports injuries. She’d like to use sleeves on all athletes to examine how they move and develop ways to identify bad habits that lead to injuries. Taking that idea a step further, sensor-embedded clothing could be used in a number of industries – manufacturing, retail, police, fire, EMS, the military, even teaching and healthcare - to track daily health and activities avoid injuries.

“It can be used to set a baseline,” she says. “From that, you (look to develop) proper mechanics to prevent injury.”

Others are seeing the potential as well. Last July, the Hackensack Meridian Health Systems and Maimonides Medical Center partnered with Nanowear to use sensor-embedded undergarments in a remote patient monitoring program aimed at managing care at home for patients dealing with COVID-19.

“When we talk about telemedicine, we often talk about video conferencing,” Venk Varadan, co-founder and CEO of New York-based digital health company, which is seeking FDA approval for its technology platform, said in a press release. “But to truly enable remote diagnostics we must incorporate clinical-grade remote monitoring that is affordable, comfortable, and simple for patients to use.”

One of the early pioneers in the mHealth wearable space is Hexoskin. Based in Montreal and launched in 2006, the company develops a wide range of sensor-embedded clothing – including smart shirts – for industries ranging from healthcare to adventure enthusiasts to the space program. In 2015, they  partnered with the Canadian Space Agency to develop a wearable platform to track astronauts’ vital signs in space.

And just two years ago, the company joined forces with the Canadian Institutes of Health Research to test the usability of sensor-embedded clothing in helping people with chronic fatigue syndrome. From there, the form factor could be used to help patients living with other chronic conditions, such as Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy, even diabetes or COPD.

And then there’s the rehab industry. Sensor-embedded sleeves could be used by patients discharged from the hospital and recovering at home, with care management supervised by providers through the telehealth platform.

“Imagine wrapping a leg with (a sensor-embedded sleeve) after a knee replacement and having access to its raw data framework – how much swelling is present, how many steps are taken, what angle it rests at when seated, etc.,” says Shaka Bahadu, Cipher Skin’s co-founder and COO. “With this data, we know the body’s response to movement, pain, or overall function. When we open this up to more patients, we now have access to a baseline to detect anomalies, predict treatment outcomes, and develop warning markers. And, when you apply that layer of insight to this information you improve treatment options and can expedite the patient recovery process.”

Bahadu says the coronavirus pandemic has helped to push mHealth wearables into the spotlight. Healthcare providers are looking for ways to track patient health outside the hospital or doctor’s office, particularly at a time when in-person care is limited. And while they’re looking at these connected health tools now to care for COVID-19 patients, the concept folds neatly into a long-term remote patient monitoring strategy for other populations.

“If there is anything we’ve learned, it’s that COVID-19 highlighted the need for a reliable remote option that provides health outcomes as accurately as when it isn’t through telehealth,” he says.