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Abstract Recent advancements in wearable photonic sensors have marked a transformative era in healthcare, enabling non‐invasive, real‐time, portable, and personalized medical monitoring. These sensors leverage the unique properties of light toward high‐performance sensing in form factors optimized for real‐world use. Their ability to offer solutions to a broad spectrum of medical challenges – from routine health monitoring to managing chronic conditions, inspires a rapidly growing translational market. This review explores the design and development of wearable photonic sensors toward various healthcare applications. The photonic sensing strategies that power these technologies are first presented, alongside a discussion of the factors that define optimal use‐cases for each approach. The means by which these mechanisms are integrated into wearable formats are then discussed, with considerations toward material selection for comfort and functionality, component fabrication, and power management. Recent developments in the space are detailed, accounting for both physical and chemical stimuli detection through various non‐invasive biofluids. Finally, a comprehensive situational overview identifies critical challenges toward translation, alongside promising solutions. Associated future outlooks detail emerging trends and mechanisms that stand to enable the integration of these technologies into mainstream healthcare practice, toward advancing personalized medicine and improving patient outcomes.
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All-printed chip-less wearable neuromorphic system for multimodal physicochemical health monitoring
Abstract Recent advancements in wearable sensor technologies have enabled real-time monitoring of physiological and biochemical signals, opening new opportunities for personalized healthcare applications. However, conventional wearable devices often depend on rigid electronics components for signal transduction, processing, and wireless communications, leading to compromised signal quality due to the mechanical mismatches with the soft, flexible nature of human skin. Additionally, current computing technologies face substantial challenges in efficiently processing these vast datasets, with limitations in scalability, high power consumption, and a heavy reliance on external internet resources, which also poses security risks. To address these challenges, we have developed a miniaturized, standalone, chip-less wearable neuromorphic system capable of simultaneously monitoring, processing, and analyzing multimodal physicochemical biomarker data (i.e., metabolites, cardiac activities, and core body temperature). By leveraging scalable printing technology, we fabricated artificial synapses that function as both sensors and analog processing units, integrating them alongside printed synaptic nodes into a compact wearable system embedded with a medical diagnostic algorithm for multimodal data processing and decision making. The feasibility of this flexible wearable neuromorphic system was demonstrated in sepsis diagnosis and patient data classification, highlighting the potential of this wearable technology for real-time medical diagnostics.
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- PAR ID:
- 10627361
- Publisher / Repository:
- Springer Nature
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Nature Communications
- Volume:
- 16
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2041-1723
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-60854-7
