Wearable sensors allow the continuous monitoring of a person’s physiology in a natural setting. At present, health-monitoring systems using electronic textiles are mainly targeting applications based upon physiological parameter measurements, such as body movements or electrocardiography (ECG). However, due to their relative complexity, there is very little activity in the development of real-time wearable chemo/bio sensors for sports applications.
Nowadays, wearable sensors such as heart rate monitors and pedometers are in common use. The use of wearable systems such as these for personalized exercise regimes for health and rehabilitation is particularly interesting.
In particular, the true potential of wearable chemical sensors, which for the real-time ambulatory monitoring of bodily fluids such as tears, sweat, urine and blood has not been realized. Here we present a brief introduction into the fields of ionogels and organic electrochemical transistors, and in particular, the concept of an OECT transistor incorporated into a sticking-plaster, along with a printable “ionogel” to provide a wearable biosensor platform.