Applications of Emerging Biomedical Devices and Systems

Dear Colleagues,

People around the world suffer from diseases or injuries caused by accidents, chronic diseases, and infectious diseases. As populations grow, health centres must treat more patients, causing delays and overload to healthcare workers.

Health technologies, such as medical devices and systems, are developed to optimise and assists healthcare workers in different activities such as treatments or monitoring. These can be any instrument, apparatus, implant, machine, material, or any related article that can be used alone or as part of a system for medical purposes. For instance, advances in fabrication technologies such as 3D printing or injection moulding have promoted an increase the number of medical devices, with the WHO estimating there to be around 2 million different types of these in the world market. These devices are used in situations including the layperson at home, remote clinics, and in advanced medical facilities for diagnosis, monitoring, and assistance, in treatments such as rehabilitation. A prominent example are vital sign monitoring systems, which can now be used at home and to transmit data to healthcare providers from a remote monitoring setting. The adoption of these devices has also triggered innovation in the development of wearables and sensing technologies at an unprecedented pace—this can be seen in wearable fitness trackers, watches, and stick patches, which are are lightweight and widely used. Such systems also require wires or wireless connectivity, facilitating the creation of systems for continuous monitoring without the constraints of a clinical set up. This has opened opportunities for experimenting with smart textiles and flexible electronics that can be used to create smart monitoring systems, wearable sensors for ECGs, motion or gesture recognition, and even wearable systems such as exoskeletons, to cite but a few. The adoption of these technologies calls for the further development of research and knowledge that can support healthcare.

This Special Issue on biomedical devices and systems welcomes the submission of recent research work in this promising area of health technologies. The call is open to a broad range of papers, covering applications of medical devises in wearables, smart textiles, wearable antennae, wearable communication systems, sensors, orthoses, exoskeletons, and research trends that promote the adoption of wearable systems in the health care sector and inspire research and development in the field. 

Recommended topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Wearable devices for monitoring;
• Smart textiles;
• Wearable sensors;
• Smart devices;
• Electronic textiles ;
• Wearable haptics;
• Hand rehabilitation;
• Hand orthoses;
• Robotic systems for orthopaedic treatments;
• Robotic devices for rehabilitation;
• Rehabilitation robotics;
• Wearable soft robotics;
• Assistive exoskeletons;
• Enhancive exoskeletons;
• Inclusive robotics;
• Assistive technologies;
• Medical devices and systems with 5G and 6G communication;
• Wireless systems;
• Healthcare connectivity;
• Remote patient monitoring;
• Wireless body area networks (WBANs).

Dr. Leonardo Garcia
Dr. Pasindu Lugoda
Prof. Dr. Maziar Nekovee
Prof. Dr. Esther Lugo-González
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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• biomedical devices
• biomedical systems
• remote health monitoring
• health care connectivity
• exoskeletons
• wearables
• smart textiles
• medical robotics