IoT and Healthcare through Textiles – A Review

In the current scenario of our planet, people are more connected through devices rather than people. This challenge of connecting the people is highly addressed by the evolution of IoT technology. It is highly innovative and promising technology that evolves day by day which transforms unconnected objects into smart connected objects. It has a great impact in many industries and one’s personal especially the innovation of IoT in healthcare industry is very beneficial from improved machine control to virtual medical assistance. The potential application of IoT in healthcare textiles is to communicate the biometric information of the wearer such as heart rate, temperature, breathing, stress, movement, acceleration, and many more with smart phones for processing. This physiological remote monitoring helps in preventing and diagnosing the health issues at an early stage for prevention to critical stage. It also helps in providing the patients in assessing their daily routine. This IoT enabled healthcare applications include body worn sensors for personal monitoring of parameters integrated with health data and environmental information. The positive aspect of this technology includes easy accessibility, personalization and availability. In addition to it, this IoT with multiple layering in healthcare applications has its own challenges and limitations in usage as textiles. Thus, the purpose of this chapter is to analyse the apprehension of IoT technologies with respect to the sensor usage in smart textiles for healthcare and applications for individualized remote action taken for improving the medical disorders.