The healthcare industry faces a significant shift towards digital health technology, with a growing demand for real-time and continuous health monitoring and disease diagnostics [1, 2, 3]. The rising prevalence of chronic diseases, such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer, coupled with an aging population, has increased the need for remote and continuous health monitoring [4, 5, 6, 7]. This has led to the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI)-based wearable sensors that can collect, analyze, and transmit real-time health data to healthcare providers so that they can make efficient decisions based on patient data. Therefore, wearable sensors have become increasingly popular due to their ability to provide a non-invasive and convenient means of monitoring patient health. These wearable sensors can track various health parameters, such as heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen saturation, skin temperature, physical activity levels, sleep patterns, and biochemical markers, such as glucose, cortisol, lactates, electrolytes, and pH and environmental parameters [1, 8, 9, 10]. Wearable health technology includes first-generation wearable technologies, such as fitness trackers, smartwatches, and current wearable sensors, and is a powerful tool in addressing healthcare challenges [2].

The data collected by wearable sensors can be analyzed using machine learning (ML) and AI algorithms to provide insights into an individual’s health status, enabling early detection of health issues and the provision of personalized healthcare [6,11]. One of the most significant advantages of AI-based wearable health technology is to promote preventive healthcare. This enables individuals and healthcare providers to proactively address symptomatic conditions before they become more severe [12,13,14,15]. Wearable devices can also encourage healthy behavior by providing incentives, reminders, and feedback to individuals, such as staying active, hydrating, eating healthily, and maintaining a healthy lifestyle by measuring hydration biomarkers and nutrients.

A team of medical researchers and engineers at Google Research has developed a way to use the front-facing camera on a smartphone to monitor a patient’s heart rate. The team has published a paper on the technology on the arXiv preprint server.

Tracking a patient’s heart rate over time can reveal clues about their cardiovascular health. The most important measurement is resting heart rate (RHR)—people with an above-normal rate are at a higher risk of heart disease and/or stroke. Persistently high rates, the researchers note, can signal a serious problem.

Over the past several years, personal health device makers have developed wearable external heart monitors, such as necklaces or smartwatches. But these devices are expensive. The researchers have found a cheaper alternative—a deep-learning system that analyzes video from the front-facing camera of a smartphone. The system is called PHRM.

The device provides a range of sensations, such as vibrations, pressure, and twisting. A team of engineers led by Northwestern University has developed a new wearable device that stimulates the skin to deliver a range of complex sensations. This thin, flexible device gently adheres to the skin, offering more realistic and immersive sensory experiences. While it is well-suited for gaming and virtual reality (VR), the researchers also see potential applications in healthcare. For instance, the device could help individuals with visual impairments “feel” their surroundings or provide feedback to those with prosthetic limbs.

It is estimated that about 80 million people worldwide live with a tremor. For example, those who live with Parkinson’s disease. The involuntary periodic movements sometimes strongly affect how patients are able to perform daily activities, such as drinking from a glass or writing.

Wearable soft robotic devices offer a potential solution to suppress such tremors. However, existing prototypes are not yet sophisticated enough to provide a real remedy.

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (MPI-IS), the University of Tübingen, and the University of Stuttgart under the Bionic Intelligence Tübingen Stuttgart (BITS) collaboration want to change this. The team equipped a biorobotic arm with two strands of artificial muscles strapped along the forearm.

An international team of scientists developed augmented reality glasses with technology to receive images beamed from a projector, to resolve some of the existing limitations of such glasses, such as their weight and bulk. The team’s research is being presented at the IEEE VR conference in Saint-Malo, France, in March 2025.

Augmented reality (AR) technology, which overlays digital information and virtual objects on an image of the real world viewed through a device’s viewfinder or electronic display, has gained traction in recent years with popular gaming apps like Pokémon Go, and real-world applications in areas including education, manufacturing, retail and health care. But the adoption of wearable AR devices has lagged over time due to their heft associated with batteries and electronic components.

AR glasses, in particular, have the potential to transform a user’s physical environment by integrating virtual elements. Despite many advances in hardware technology over the years, AR glasses remain heavy and awkward and still lack adequate computational power, battery life and brightness for optimal user experience.

From brain implants that allow paralyzed patients to communicate to the wearable devices enhancing our capabilities, brain-computer interfaces could change the way we use our minds forever. (Source: Bloomberg)

Stretchable display materials, which are gaining traction in the next-generation display market, have the advantage of being able to stretch and bend freely, but the limitations of existing materials have resulted in distorted screens and poor fit.

General elastomeric substrates are prone to screen distortion due to the “Poisson’s ratio” phenomenon, in which stretching in one direction causes the screen to shrink in the vertical direction. In particular, electronics that are in close contact with the skin, such as wearable devices, are at risk of wrinkling or pulling on the skin during stretching and shrinking, resulting in poor fit and performance.

A research team led by Dr. Jeong Gon Son of the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) and Professor Yongtaek Hong of Seoul National University have developed a nanostructure-aligned stretchable substrate that dramatically lowers the Poisson’s ratio. The work is published in the journal Advanced Materials.

New energy-harvesting nanogenerators may power IoT devices, sensors, and wearables using everyday mechanical movements.

This was first predicted by Omni magazine in 1981.

In the world of medicine, the ability to listen to the intricate symphony of sounds within the human body has long been a vital diagnostic tool. Physicians routinely employ stethoscopes to capture the subtle rhythms of air moving in and out of the lungs, the steady beat of the heart, and even the progress of digested food through the gastrointestinal tract.

These sounds hold valuable information about a person’s health, and any deviations from the norm can signal the presence of underlying medical issues. Now, a groundbreaking development from Northwestern University is set to transform the way we monitor these vital sounds.

Researchers at Northwestern University have introduced a revolutionary soft, miniaturized wearable device that transcends the episodic measurements typically obtained during periodic doctor examinations. These innovative devices adhere gently to the skin, enabling continuous, wireless monitoring of crucial body sounds across multiple regions of the body simultaneously. This groundbreaking research was published in the prestigious journal Nature Medicine.

In a breakthrough that could transform bioelectronic sensing, an interdisciplinary team of researchers at Rice University has developed a new method to dramatically enhance the sensitivity of enzymatic and microbial fuel cells using organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs). The research was recently published in the journal Device.

The innovative approach amplifies electrical signals by three orders of magnitude and improves signal-to-noise ratios, potentially enabling the next generation of highly sensitive, low-power biosensors for health and environmental monitoring.

“We have demonstrated a simple yet powerful technique to amplify weak bioelectronic signals using OECTs, overcoming previous challenges in integrating fuel cells with electrochemical sensors,” said corresponding author Rafael Verduzco, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and materials science and nanoengineering. “This method opens the door to more versatile and efficient biosensors that could be applied in medicine, environmental monitoring and even wearable technology.”