Enter the smart bandage (Image: Martin Hospach/Plainpicture)

BANDAGES can do more than heal. A project called Bioscope is building a bandage-like system that monitors a hospital patient’s temperature, heart rate, movement and bodily noises, and transmits that data wirelessly to a computer that tracks their health.

The housing for the sensor modules is 3D-printed on to the bandage, allowing nursing staff to swap sensors in and out as they see fit. The heart rate is measured through electrical activity at the skin surface, temperature through a contact thermometer, and physical movement using an accelerometer. Sounds are gathered through a contact microphone: the researchers say that the sound patterns from internal organs can be used to assess the wearer’s health.

Bioscope was developed by an alliance of nurses, engineers and computer scientists at the National Taiwan University in Taipei. The system allows various sensors to be stacked on top of the bandage, depending on which vital signs need to be monitored. The team’s goal is to allow basic diagnoses to be made remotely using the data collected, as well as monitoring people after they leave the hospital.


The system will be presented at the UbiComp conference in Seattle, Washington, in September.

This article appeared in print under the headline “Sensitive bandages know how you feel”