A T-shirt that monitors your heart

A novel electrocardiogram device built into a shirt could cut precious time off confirming a cardiac event needing immediate intervention.

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The first product in the hWear line of smart-digital garments by Israel’s HealthWatch Technologies created a buzz at the recent annual meeting of the American Telemedicine Association and is expected to be marketed as an FDA Class II medical device by the end of 2014. The fully washable hWear shirt is interwoven with a mixture of high-tech nylon threads and conducting fibers placed in the same locations where the 12-15 leads of an ECG machine would be attached to the body, explains Dr. Dov Rubin, vice president for marketing and business development. ECG signals collected passively by the textile sensors are constantly analyzed for cardiac events such as arrhythmias and ischemia, via medical devices such as a Holter monitor or a Bluetooth unit snapped onto the side of the shirt. An alert to the patient’s and doctor’s smartphone is automatically generated if any of these are detected or if the wearer falls or is immobile for an unusual amount of time. More...