Development of a textile-based sensor for measuring body fluid

Heart failure (HF) is the third most common reason for hospitalization in Canada, where, the direct health care costs of HF are $2.8 billion. HF affects 600,000 Canadians with median survival of only 1.5 years after diagnosis. HF patients stay longer at hospital. Even after discharge, 1 out of 5 of patients returns to the hospital within a month. The major complaint of HF patients is shortness of breath due to extra water in their body and lungs. Thus, monitoring of body water is an important challenge in HF, especially at home settings. Unfortunately, current technologies for remote monitoring/measuring of body water in HF population have low accuracy or require surgery to be implanted inside the body.
To conveniently measure body water at home, we are developing a sensor, called Heart Health Clothes (H2C), that can be embedded inside patients clothes or wearables such as watches or patches. H2C is easy for patients to use without assistance at home, and for care-providers to use in a point of care fashion. Unlike other at-home monitoring devices, this new technology provides a fully integrated system that requires no more work than putting on a piece of clothing.

Faculty Supervisor:

Azadeh Yadollahi

Student:

Nasim Montazeri;Bryan Piper;Robert Amelard

Partner:

BioSenseTex

Discipline:

Engineering - biomedical

Sector:

Professional, scientific and technical services

University:

University of Toronto