Image: © MoiraM/Stock.adobe.com
By measuring vitals including heart rate, sweat and body temperature, the garment is designed to monitor the safety of the isolated or elderly.
Telecoms company ZTE has shown off a new kind of fashion with a partnered tech venture alongside wearable tech company, Let’s Web-earable Solutions.
YouCare is a T-shirt equipped with bio-vital health detection technology that can read your heart rate, sweat components, muscle effort and body temperature.
Unveiled at the Mobile World Congress 2021 in Barcelona, ZTE will start its 5G testing in an innovation and research centre located in L’Aquila, Italy.
The high-tech clothing uses a 5G connection to send the health data in real time to the relevant health centres and control unit.
By attaching a pocket-sized device to the torso, users can send their health parameters to mobile phones or computers. After measuring and averaging a user’s vitals, the T-shirt can sound an alarm if they move beyond a healthy state.
The project had input from multiple bodies, including the Italian Red Cross, which said that it has been assisting on the project since 2018.
The national president of the Italian Red Cross, Francesco Rocca, said: “It is an invention that will change the life and the quality of home and remote medical assistance to many citizens experiencing health problems and vulnerable people suffering from chronic diseases, ensuring accessibility to care services and the support of our national and international network.”
He also highlighted that the efforts of the Red Cross’s 150,000 volunteers needed to be facilitated by increasingly sophisticated technology to accomplish what he called “the last mile”.
This means ensuring no one is excluded, and that even people in the most remote of situations can be reached.
The manufacturing of the T-shirt takes places entirely in Italy, and has been patented and certified as a medical device.
Umberto Sgambati, CEO of Proger, which has invested in Let’s Web-earable Solutions, said: “From the very first moment, we have believed and invested in what seemed to us a totally revolutionary idea that today is a concrete reality.
“Certified as a medical device, it has been enriched by the predictive algorithms of cardiovascular disorders of BSP-Medical, the world leader in the field of medical data science”.
