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Smart textiles for personalized healthcare

Nature Electronics volume 5, pages 142–156 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Incorporating sensing and therapeutic capabilities into everyday textiles could be a powerful approach in the development of personalized healthcare. The creation of such smart textiles has been driven by the fabrication of various miniaturized platform technologies, and has led to the construction of compact, autonomous and interconnected functional textiles. Here we review the development of smart textiles for application in personalized healthcare. We examine the different platform technologies, the various fabrication strategies and the range of clinical scenarios in which they are used. We also explore the current commercial and regulatory landscapes, and consider issues of data management. Finally, we highlight the key steps required to transition these technological platforms to commercial applications.

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Fig. 1: Timeline of platform technology development for smart healthcare textiles.
Fig. 2: Fabrication strategies of smart healthcare textiles.
Fig. 3: Smart diagnostic textiles.
Fig. 4: Smart therapeutic textiles.
Fig. 5: ATBAN for personalized healthcare.
Fig. 6: Future trends in smart healthcare textiles.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the Henry Samueli School of Engineering & Applied Science and the Department of Bioengineering at the University of California, Los Angeles, for start-up support. J.C. also acknowledges a 2020 Okawa Foundation Research Grant, the 2021 Hellman Follows Fund, and the invitation for this Review paper.

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  1. These authors contributed equally: Alberto Libanori, Guorui Chen.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Bioengineering, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Alberto Libanori, Guorui Chen, Xun Zhao, Yihao Zhou & Jun Chen

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Contributions

J.C. initialized and supervised the project. A.L., G.C. and J.C. coordinated data collection, analysis and writing of the manuscript. X.Z. and Y.Z. helped with figure design and made technical comments. All authors contributed to the discussions and revised the manuscript at all stages.

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Correspondence to Jun Chen.

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Libanori, A., Chen, G., Zhao, X. et al. Smart textiles for personalized healthcare. Nat Electron 5, 142–156 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-022-00723-z

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