intelligent textiles

In future, clothing may do a lot more than keep you warm or looking smart.

Scientists are working on fabrics which will monitor your health and spot early signs of illness.

The "intelligent textiles" will be embedded with sensors capable of testing body fluids such as blood and sweat.

Some of the possible applications include keeping track of the health of athletes, recovering hospital patients, and individuals working in extreme conditions.

A multi-sensor test patch is already near completion, and researchers hope soon to try out the experimental fabric on volunteers.

Project co-ordinator Jean Luprano, from the Swiss technology company CSEM, told the Engineer magazine: "Sensors have been built and have been tested in the lab. We have started their integration into textile patches.. We will soon have a multi-sensor patch which will allow us to sense several elements in parallel."

The technology will ultimately provide remote monitoring of vital signs, diagnostics to spot early illnesses and the detection of metabolic disorders.

Its first planned application will be to monitor sweat by measuring acidity, salinity and perspiration rate.

More advanced textiles will be able to detect levels of infection in burns patients, or test blood oxygen saturation levels.

The European Union is putting up half the money to pay for the £2.1 million Biotex project, which involves researchers from eight institutions and companies from four countries.

One of the main attractions of fitting sensors into clothing is that it provides access to 90% of the body surface."

Among others, the consortium aims at applications such as monitoring of metabolism of obese people, sportsmen, wound healing and transplant monitoring," said Mr Luprano.

"The advantages of the technologies developed in Biotex is that the system will be wearable, in the form of textile patches and later T-shirts."

However, he stressed that the technology was not meant to replace traditional medical diagnostic methods.