Challenges of wearable health monitors - a case study of foetal ECG monitor

IoT-based wearable health monitoring devices promise multiple benefits such as remote diagnosis, early-warnings, continuous home-care monitoring etc. These technologies will potentially impact people’s quality-of-life while reducing costs to healthcare service providers. The challenges for the development of these technologies are manifold, particularly for monitoring bio-signals. In this paper, we discuss the challenges associated with wearable health monitors through a case study of a fetal ECG wearable garment. This is focused on three main areas: a) sensor design and signal conditioning, b) data processing, and communications and c) printed sensors integrated into IoT garments. We discuss in detail the current design challenges to be tackled for achieving a precise signal retrieval.