Review Article on the Cover of Nature Reviews Materials

Advances in materials science, bioengineering, electronics and data analysis, together with the rapidly increasing interest in monitoring health and well-being, have been the primary drivers of innovation in modern wearable sensors. More recently, the considerable reductions in cost have enabled the penetration of modern wearable sensors into many segments of the population and geographical regions of the world, unlocking continuous monitoring at a scale never seen before. In addition, advances in fabrication methods have enabled greater sophistication at increasingly smaller dimensions, enabling sensor platforms to reach scales amenable to integration into personal technologies. With continued innovation and development, together with the widespread use of wearables, we are now many steps closer to fulfilling the prerequisite for proactive health care by monitoring the time-resolved variation in the physiological state of the body.

In this Review, H. Ceren Ates, Peter Q. Nguyen, James J. Collins, Can Dincer and colleagues introduce the recent developments in the field of wearable sensors with a particular focus on the sensing, decision-making and power units to establish a framework for the design and implementation of wearable devices. The authors examine the various building blocks of wearable sensors, analyse the current trends, discuss the challenges, and provide recommendations to establish a vision for how this field might evolve in the next decade to transform the healthcare.

This cover foreshadows a future, where the utilization of multiple next-generation smart wearables enables distributed proactive healthcare. The image created by the Ella Maru Studio.

The review article can be accessed under: H. Ceren Ates, Peter Q. Nguyen, Laura Gonzalez-Macia, Eden Morales-Narváez, Firat Güder, James J. Collins, Can Dincer, End-to-end design of wearable sensors, Nature Review Materials, 2022, 7, 887–907.

Contact:
Dr. Can Dincer
Junior Research Group – Disposable Microsystems
IMTEK – Department of Microsystems Engineering &
FIT Freiburg Center for Interactive Materials and Bioinspired Technologies
phone: 0761/203-95129
dincer(at)imtek.de