Wearable, Implantable, and Interventional Medical Devices Based on Smart Electronic Skins

Recent advances in soft, flexible, and stretchable sensors have offered a good opportunity to design various types of wearable flexible medical devices for achievement of continuous health monitoring, preventive medicine and robot feedback and control. The integration of biofunctionability with electronic skin is undoubtedly an attractive prospect in the sense that the successful medical device requires good biocompatibility, sensing capability, and high degrees of mechanical flexibility. This work summarizes the last developments in electronic skin for next-generation medical devices that can simultaneously detect a variety of physiological information of the human body. The key properties of e-skin that must be realized for their versatile use in medical applications are discussed in detail. Next, the paper outlines the overall applications of these sensors in wearable medicine, implantable medicine, and interventional medicine, and emphasizes how these devices monitor human health status and may be expected to replace traditional clinical tools. Finally, the challenges and future research opportunities in the field of wearable health monitoring are proposed.