Overview
The rapid pace of population ageing and the global outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic have highlighted the deficiency of medical resources and inefficiency of health systems, thus calling for imminent advancement of biomedical technologies. Current centralized healthcare is mainly offline and curative: the monitoring of patients’ physiological data is intermittent at doctor-centric facilities and care is given upon symptomatic conditions, which fundamentally limits the access and bandwidth of medical resources. Smart materials capable of continuously and sustainably sensing body signals, with the integration of wearable bioelectronics, biomechanical energy harvesting, and advanced manufacturing (AM), can radically change current practices. Assisted by artificial intelligence (AI) oriented data science, such an intelligent materials platform will lead to a paradigm shift in healthcare by launching continuous, pervasive, and personalized digital health solutions. Physiological conditions can be monitored at user-centric settings and predictive care will be given before life-threatening illness progresses. The research outcome will revolutionize many fields such as material design, bioelectronics, advanced manufacturing, renewable energies, predictive analytics, wireless communication, human-machine interfacing, and many other aspects of the Internet of things era in general.
With this vision, our research concentrates on the theme of “iMESH – intelligent Materials for Energy and Sensors towards Healthcare”, or more specifically, an intelligent Materials-based mesh synergizing Energy harvesting and wearable Sensors towards digital Health. We aim to develop self-powered wearable bioelectronic systems for creating sustainable and disruptive digital health technologies.
