Smart Shirts Will Monitor Heart Rate

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March 4, 2011 by Kate Laymon | 2 Comments

Imagine that at your next routine check-up at your doctor’s office, you are given a new shirt to wear during your appointment. When the nurse comes in to check your vitals, she doesn’t bring a thermometer, or a blood pressure gauge. In fact, she doesn’t have to touch you at all. Instead, she finds your heart rate, blood pressure readings and body temperature on a computer and tells you that the shirt you are wearing transmitted the information.

Well, the technology is not quite there yet, but it’s getting close. According to Inc.com, Mc10 is developing bendable electronics that will be able to monitor an athlete’s heart rate without wires or clunky devices.

Instead of using rigid circuit boards, MC10 joins components such as microchips and electrodes with springy connectors made of gold wire. Then it embeds the devices in stretchy material, such as silicone rubber or spandex. The technology can be used, for example, to place a device in a spandex shirt and monitor an athlete’s heart rate during physical activity. MC10 has received an $850,000 grant from the U.S. Navy to create flexible solar modules for tents and unmanned aerial vehicles, as well as a shared $1.7 million grant from the Department of Energy to develop flexible thermoelectric devices…

MC10 is working with Reebok on a line of smart athletic apparel that is scheduled to hit stores by early 2012.