Abstract
An innovative system named WEALTHY is presented, where conducting and piezoresistive materials
in form of fiber and yarn are integrated in a garment and used as sensor and electrode elements. The
simultaneous recording of vital signs allows parameters’ extrapolation and inter-signal elaboration that
contribute to produce alert messages and synoptic patient table. The system can be used to assist cardiac patients
during rehabilitation, not only by caring physicians to have an accurate description of clinical status of the
patient at fixed and repeated time points in order to tailor the best medical treatment for long term care, but also
allow the patient to be continuously followed during selected time intervals, such as during physical activity or
occurrence of symptoms, to discover potential threats and generate appropriate alerts to patient, physician or
emergency medical systems. The system can also assist professional workers subject to considerable physical and
psychological stress and/or environmental and professional health risks.
Introduction
A new concept in health care, aimed at providing continuous remote monitoring of patient vital
signs, is now emerging. This paradigm shift is both socially driven-the rising cost of assistance, the
need to improve early illness detection and medical intervention- and technologically driven. In
particular, the advances in sensor technology, as well as in communication technology and
treatment of data, constitute the basis on which this new generation of health care systems can
consolidate.
At the same time systems designed to be minimally invasive for health status monitoring, based on
flexible and smart technologies conformable to the human body can help to improve the autonomy
and the quality of life of patients. They are also cost-effective in providing around-the-clock
assistance, for example in rehabilitation from cardiac disease or for the monitoring of professional
workers engaged in extreme environmental conditions. Finally, by providing direct feedback to the
users, they improve their awareness and potentially allow better control of their own condition.
A remote health monitoring can be accepted and used only if the monitoring devices is based on
wearable sensing interfaces, easy to use and easy to customise; the new interfaces must guarantee
to users a continuous remote control, in a “natural” environment without interfering with daily
activity. In these systems functionalised materials in fiber and yarn form can be integrated and used
as basic elements to fabricate woven or knitted fabrics possessing distributed sensors and functions.
The simultaneous recording of vital signs allows parameters’ extrapolation and inter-signal
elaboration [1] that contribute to make alert messages and personalized synoptic tables of patient’s
health.
Wealthy system aims to set up a comfortable health monitoring system. This is based on a
“wearable” interface, implemented by integrating fiber and yarn in fabric sensors, advanced signal
processing techniques and modern telecommunication systems, on a textile platform and by
developing a monitoring system for data management, with local intelligence in the form of a
decision support unit.

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