Continuous ambulatory cardiac monitoring using electrocardiogram (ECG) can reveal a range of essential health conditions. However, commercially available devices rely on bulky wires, rigid sensors/electronics and cause great discomfort that disrupts one’s lifestyle and prevents long-term use. Moreover, standard gel-based electrodes are prone to degradation over long-term use and can causing allergic skin reactions. Also, research-level skin-wearable devices, while excelling in few aspects, fall short as concept-only presentations, due to the fundamental challenges in active wireless communication and integration as a single device platform.

Here, we introduce a fully wireless, low-profile, multifunctional stretchable hybrid electronic (SHE) device that offers smart, connected, and ambulatory health monitoring. As shown in Figure 1, the low-modulus, elastomeric system construction provides the gentle, yet sufficient, device adhesion to skin, obviating the need for straps, tapes, or adhesives, and demonstrates a type of monitoring scheme inconspicuous not only to the observer, but also to the user. Integration of a set of stretchable nanomembrane sensors with a highly flexible, membrane-based wireless circuit enables the continuous, long-range (up to 15 m) monitoring of ECG, heart rate, respiratory rate, and physical activities. Implementation of convolutional neural networks and algorithms for real-time classifications of multi-modal physiological signals demonstrates the device feasibility for multi-faceted clinically relevant analysis. In vivo demonstrations involving human subjects both with and without cardiac conditions reveal the feasibility of the device as a continuous, ambulatory, and multifunctional health monitor with emphasis on real-time detection of cardiac abnormalities. Further in vivo demonstration of SHE applied on athletes during treadmill exercises validate the versatility of SHE in both clinical and research environments.

Figure 1: Overview of SHE. (A) Photograph showing the stretchable hybrid electronics applied on human chest. (B) Blow-up render detailing the structural components of SHE including the thin-film stretchable skin electrodes, hyperelastic membranes, mechanical decoupling chamber, stretchable connector, and flexible data acquisition unit.