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Soft, skin-integrated electronic sensors can provide continuous measurements of diverse physiological parameters, with broad relevance to the future of human health care. Motion artifacts can, however, corrupt the recorded signals, particularly those associated with mechanical signatures of cardiopulmonary processes. Design strategies introduced here address this limitation through differential operation of a matched, time-synchronized pair of high-bandwidth accelerometers located on parts of the anatomy that exhibit strong spatial gradients in motion characteristics. When mounted at a location that spans the suprasternal notch and the sternal manubrium, these dual-sensing devices allow measurements of heart rate and sounds, respiratory activities, body temperature, body orientation, and activity level, along with swallowing, coughing, talking, and related processes, without sensitivity to ambient conditions during routine daily activities, vigorous exercises, intense manual labor, and even swimming. Deployments on patients with COVID-19 allow clinical-grade ambulatory monitoring of the key symptoms of the disease even during rehabilitation protocols.

Infection is the unavoidable threat to any orthopedic implant that can also force its removal as extreme remedy. The diagnosis of infections is currently achieved by time consuming imaging (X-Rays, MRI, CT) or just by the onset of the patient’s pain, when the problem is in an advanced status. Instead, by equipping the prosthesis with a local sensor (for the temperature as a first) and with a wireless communication radio, an early-time identification of the infection could be achieved. This paper proposes a method to transform an orthopedic device provided with holes (like a bone fixation plate) into an harvesting antenna integrating an RFID sensor, with no battery onboard. A miniaturized antenna adapter, fully embedded into a free hole, with tuning capability, collects the electromagnetic power intercepted by the medical device and transfers it to the RFID circuit. Simulations and experimentations with several prototypes demonstrated that the augmented implanted device can establish a stable RFID link up to 0.5 m and that it is able to correctly sample the variation (37°C – 40°C) of the local temperature of the bone as in case of typical deep infections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wireless epidermal devices based on Radio frequency Identification (RFID) enable a contactless and non-invasive monitoring of the human body by sampling health parameters directly on the skin. To achieve multi-parametric sensing, while preserving the intrinsic simplicity and the low cost of RFID tags, a dual-chip epidermal device is here proposed. At this purpose a polarization-diversity loop antenna is exploited so that two almost independent current modes are excited. The resulting radiation patterns are both broadside, thus enabling the simultaneous gathering of two independent dataset from the same maximum distance. A 3.5 by 3.5 cm battery-less, flexible and soft prototype provides −13 dBi embedded realized gain with read distances ranging from 0.6m to 1.5m depending on the microchip sensitivity. The electromagnetic performance of the two ports remain similar even when the tag is applied onto rather in-homogeneous body regions. With reference to body temperature monitoring, the device has been experimented in both controlled and real-life environments, demonstrating the possibility of doubling the sensing capabilities of RFID epidermal devices without affecting their size and radiation performances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]