Biosymbiotic platform for chronic long-range monitoring of biosignals in limited resource settings.

Remote patient monitoring is a critical component of digital medicine, and the COVID-19 pandemic has further highlighted its importance. Wearable sensors aimed at noninvasive extraction and transmission of high-fidelity physiological data provide an avenue toward at-home diagnostics and therapeutics; however, the infrastructure requirements for such devices limit their use to areas with well-established connectivity. This accentuates the socioeconomic and geopolitical gap in digital health technology and points toward a need to provide access in areas that have limited resources. Low-power wide area network (LPWAN) protocols, such as LoRa, may provide an avenue toward connectivity in these settings; however, there has been limited work on realizing wearable devices with this functionality because of power and electromagnetic constraints. In this work, we introduce wearables with electromagnetic, electronic, and mechanical features provided by a biosymbiotic platform to realize high-fidelity biosignals transmission of 15 miles without the need for satellite infrastructure. The platform implements wireless power transfer for interaction-free recharging, enabling long-term and uninterrupted use over weeks without the need for the user to interact with the devices. This work presents demonstration of a continuously wearable device with this long-range capability that has the potential to serve resource-constrained and remote areas, providing equitable access to digital health.

Context-aware electromagnetic design for continuously wearable biosymbiotic devices.

Imperceptible wireless wearable devices are critical to advance digital medicine with the goal to capture clinical-grade biosignals continuously. Design of these systems is complex because of unique interdependent electromagnetic, mechanic and system level considerations that directly influence performance. Typically, approaches consider body location, related mechanical loads, and desired sensing capabilities, however, design for real world application context is not formulated. Wireless power casting eliminates user interaction and the need to recharge batteries, however, implementation is challenging because the use case influences performance. To facilitate a data-driven approach to design, we demonstrate a method for personalized, context-aware antenna, rectifier and wireless electronics design that considers human behavioral patterns and physiology to optimize electromagnetic and mechanical features for best performance across an average day of the target user group. Implementation of these methods result in devices that enable continuous recording of high-fidelity biosignals over weeks without the need for human interaction.

Biosymbiotic, personalized, and digitally manufactured wireless devices for indefinite collection of high-fidelity biosignals.

Digital medicine, the ability to stream continuous information from the body to gain insight into health status, manage disease, and predict onset health problems, is only gradually developing. Key technological hurdles that slow the proliferation of this approach are means by which clinical grade biosignals are continuously obtained without frequent user interaction. To overcome these hurdles, solutions in power supply and interface strategies that maintain high-fidelity readouts chronically are critical. This work introduces a previously unexplored class of devices that overcomes the limitations using digital manufacturing to tailor geometry, mechanics, electromagnetics, electronics, and fluidics to create unique personalized devices optimized to the wearer. These elastomeric, three-dimensional printed, and laser-structured constructs, called biosymbiotic devices, enable adhesive-free interfaces and the inclusion of high-performance, far-field energy harvesting to facilitate continuous wireless and battery-free operation of multimodal and multidevice, high-fidelity biosensing in an at-home setting without user interaction.