Breakthrough technology for comfortable long-term home monitoring

Effective health management relies on accurate, long-term monitoring of physiological parameters. Holst Centre has developed a fully disposable multi-sensor health patch platform that is customizable for the home monitoring of a wide range of medical conditions and ailments. With its ultrathin and conformal form factor, it is comfortable and reliable enough to be worn on the human body for longer periods of time.

Continuous health monitoring from the patient’s home has a promising future. It will enable us to find new diagnostic methods, improve therapies and reduce hospital re-admissions. The health patch platform developed by Holst Centre is an ideal solution for long-term remote monitoring, potentially offering huge benefits for elderly people, chronic patients or people recovering from surgery; they can be checked at home without having to visit the hospital, making their lives easier and their treatments more effective.

Best of both worlds

At Holst Centre we combine TNO’s expertise in printed electronics and bio-compatible material stack with imec’s low-power miniaturised readout electronics to create body-monitoring solutions that are comfortable to wear while still delivering reliable, high-quality and multi-sensor data. Many years of research and development has resulted in a reliable, multi-purpose monitoring platform that is fully customisable to the patient’s needs.

Long-term wear comfort

One of the key differentiators of our health-patch technology is the medical-grade base structure, leveraging our expertise in printed and flexible electronics. It is stretchable, waterproof and biocompatible, offering wear comfort up to seven days, and is conformal to any body shape. The dry-electrode technology we have developed together with our materials partners is a key component of this base structure, and enables long-term wear, unlike traditional hydrogel-based electrodes, which cause dryness and itchiness.

Versatile, fully customisable chip

Our MUSEIC v3 chip is another unique selling proposition of our health-patch platform. This low-power, all-in-one chip measures vital health signs, such as heart rate (ECG), breathing rate (bioimpedance) and blood-oxygen saturation (PPG). The collected information is pre-processed and wirelessly transmitted through the integrated on-chip Bluetooth radio.

This significantly reduces the amount of data, which is safely transmitted to a mobile phone, base station or the cloud. Combined with smart algorithms and data analysis, it is possible to develop tailored applications, such as pre- and post-operative monitoring of patients undergoing transaortic valve replacement, and the monitoring of patients suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD); all integrated onto a chip with a size of just 4.3 x 4.3 mm.