Dude, these briefs could save your life

Printed on the waistband and in constant contact with the skin is an electronic biosensor, designed to measure blood pressure, heart rate and other essential signs. The technologies, developed by nano-engineering professor Joseph Wang of University of California San Diego and his team, breaks new ground in the field of intell

The technique is comparable to conventional screen-printing though the ink contains carbon electrodes.

The project is becoming funded by the U.S. military with American troops likely to be the 1st recipients.

“This distinct project entails monitoring the injury of soldiers during battlefield surgery and the goal is to create minimally invasive sensors that can locate, in the field, and identify the kind of injury,” Wang told Reuters Tv.

Ultimately, the biosensor that detects an injury will also be able to direct the release of drugs to relieve discomfort and even treat the wound.

But the technology’s range of application goes beyond the military.

“We envision all the trend of personalized medicine for remote monitoring of the elderly at residence, monitoring a wide range of biomedical markers, like cardiac markers, alerting for any possible stroke, diabetic adjustments and other changes related to other biomedical scenario,” said Wang.

Wearable biosensors can also present useful data to athletes or even measure blood alcohol levels.

But Wang said it could be some time before these intelligent underpants are worn by soldiers in the field as a lot more work is necessary to guarantee these monitoring systems are robust and durable enough to cope with the wearer’s every day activity

Even so he said there are growing requirements for creating dependable, wearable healthcare monitoring systems.

“Whilst clothing-integrated electrochemical sensors hold considerable promise for future healthcare, military or sport applications, such non-invasive textile-based sensing needs proper attention to key challenges of sample delivery to the electrode surface and of sensor calibration and interconnection,” Wang’s team said in a report published in The Royal Society of Chemistry journal.