Smart textiles for healthcare: applications and technologies

Smart textiles are considered to be a new niche for products with great potentials on the textile and apparel market. Generally, smart textiles are referred as textile products with additional value, i.e. they have the common properties of textiles, but insure additional functions, providing attractive solutions for a wide range of application fields, such as healthcare, clothing for protection and sports and technical textiles for automotive industry. However, manufacturing of smart textile products demands a complex and innovative technological approach, combing conventional textile manufacturing technologies as weaving, knitting and embroidery with technologies originating from the electronic sphere, such as coating, lithography and ink-jet printing. Thus, functionalization of textiles may be processed at different levels, i.e. from fibres till fabric or even ready-made clothing. Understanding of drivers, state-of the-art and tendencies in smart textiles ensures further efficient development technology and its interaction with manufactures and consumers. The paper explores and systematically describes applications of smart textiles for healthcare with sensing and actuating functions and introduces to the main principles of technology for textile sensor manufacturing.