This smart T-shirt could save your life
A T-SHIRT that constantly monitors the heart’s activity and detects abnormalities could help protect people against stroke.
The hi-tech shirt, called Cardioskin, has electrodes stitched into the cotton fabric which carry out round-theclock checks on the heart’s electrical activity. These then connect to a tiny chip in the garment which wirelessly beams the results to an app on the patient’s smartphone.
The app is able to share the data with a cardiologist, who can assess it.
The T-shirt, which can be washed up to 35 times before it needs replacing, has been developed to improve the detection of dangerous heart conditions such as atrial fibrillation, which causes an irregular heart rhythm and raises the risk of stroke.
Conventional ECGS are done in a hospital. But most patients experience abnormal heart rhythms only intermittently. This means the chance of picking them up during a short hospital check is slim.
The Cardioskin T-shirt, which is made from a white cotton fabric, can be worn 24 hours a day, meaning it is more likely to pick up any abnormal rhythms in the patient’s heart.
The T-shirt, developed by French drugs company Servier, has been approved for sale in the UK and is expected to become available for doctors to use later this year. |