Researchers Design Material for Wearable Monitor to Track Heart Health

After receiving a $2.6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a team of researchers from the University of Missouri created a breathable material for a wearable heart monitor that uses dual signals simultaneously to measure heart health indications.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), heart disease is the leading cause of death in the US for men, women, and people of most racial and ethnic groups. Taking about one life every 34 seconds, approximately 670,000 people in the US died from heart disease in 2020. This accounted for one in five deaths that year.

However, the condition can be treated with early detection and timely interventions, according to the press release from the University of Missouri.

A $2.6 million grant from the NIH led Zheng Yan, PhD, an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical, Biological and Chemical Engineering and the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Missouri, and a group of researchers to develop a breathable material containing antibacterial and antiviral properties. This effort aims to support the ongoing development of a multifunctional, wearable heart monitor.

“We want to provide comprehensive information about the status of a person’s heart,” said Yan in the press release. “Effects of heart disease can often happen unexpectedly, so it’s important to have continuous, long-term monitoring for early detection and timely interventions. We want this to help reduce the number of people succumbing to death from heart disease in the U.S.”

Using an electrocardiogram (ECG) to measure the electrical signal of the heart and a seismocardiogram (SCG) to measure heart vibrations, the wearable device aims to continuously monitor the health of the human heart.

The information of the dual signals can then be recorded onto an electronic device and passed onto a healthcare provider. The provider could then use this data to identify any warning signs of heart disease.

Yan described how the device might stay on the skin of a patient for up to several weeks. The integrated antibacterial and antiviral properties could help prevent harmful bacteria from accumulating on the skin. Other benefits of the material include how the breathability could help mitigate the loss of signal when a patient sweats, along with its softness.

“Under the microscope, our skin is not flat,” said Yan. “So, an ultra-soft material can form what we call a conformal contact, which is very important for us in order to have a high level of accuracy for our signal recording of the electrical activity of the human heart.”

Wearable use in healthcare is growing, with researchers from other institutions also developing new devices and exploring their utility in clinical care.

For example, in August, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers created a wearable, wireless skin sensor to detect glucose concentrations, blood pressure, and heart rate and activity. Driven by the growing interest in healthcare-related wearables, MIT researchers developed the device to collect patient information, which could then be tracked on a smartphone.

Following a trial involving a group of volunteer study participants using the sensor, researchers concluded that it could successfully detect changes related to gallium nitride surface acoustic waves, which allowed for the collection of heart rate data.