Abstract:

Significance Wearable healthcare systems have emerged as important candidates that can seamlessly collect and track user biodata. Textiles have attracted much attention due to their material and structural engineering advantages, as well as their unique mechanical properties, scalability and breathability, expanding from one-dimensional fibers to two-dimensional fabrics and three-dimensional structures, laying the foundation for the development of smart wearable health textiles. Such textiles not only provide a powerful tool for remote health monitoring and personal health management through regular and continuous monitoring of a wide range of physical, electrophysiological and biochemical signals. In addition, these devices show great potential for applications in the fields of preventive medicine, disease diagnosis, rehabilitation therapy, and daily health management. It is foreseeable that smart wearable textiles have the potential to revolutionize personalized medical monitoring and precise treatment, becoming central to numerous healthcare applications. This review comprehensively overviews recent progress in smart textiles for wearable healthcare applications, aiming to inspire innovative device designs and treatment protocols for future medical technologies.

Progress Wearable technologies based on fibers, yarns, and textiles offer ideal solutions for enabling multifunctional and scalable health devices. Analysis of healthcare sensing textiles is carried out for electrophysiological, biophysical, biochemical signals monitoring and discussion representative applications. Advances in electrode design, materials, and structures for bioelectronic devices have enabled real-time monitoring of variations in physiological signals. Wearable robots are a hot topic for future development of textile devices. The development of human-machine interaction and emotion recognition technologies within the textiles are also introduced. The application of big data and machine learning to textiles enables the restoration of haptic sensation in patients with neurological or degenerative diseases, as well as the real-time management and adjustment of emotional well-being. Subsequently, the types of therapeutic approaches adopted by wearable textiles are examined, such as physiotherapy include phototherapy, thermotherapy, electrotherapy, and ultrasound treatments and drug delivery. Miniaturization and excellent biocompatibility of materials are reported to be prerequisites for these functions. In addition, the article outlines the applications in various special populations. Smart wearable textiles have emerged as a crucial solution for monitoring users' biometric data and offering intelligent feedback and management. Smart wearable textiles have found a place in numerous domains, promising to reshape industries from medical care and prevention to robotics.

Conclusion and Prospect Overall, advances in materials manufacturing technology, surface engineering, textile structural design and multifunctional integration have greatly contributed to the development of smart wearables. Although significant progress has been made in the healthcare of wearable smart textiles, there are still some challenges for future development. New materials and structures should be developed to improve washability and ensure reusability, and further miniaturizing electronics and optimizing the interface engineering of systems are necessary to maintain stable contact between the skin and bioelectrodes, thus promoting prolonged wearability. In parallel, integrating with novel textile structures, such as three-dimensional woven structures, which inherently offer flexibility, robustness, porosity, and durability, is expected to enhance performance for healthcare applications. In addition, efficient processing technologies should be developed to enable scalable, and automated production. Large-scale production is also a key stage in the widespread adoption of wearable devices. Currently, most wearable devices rely on time-consuming fabrication techniques and sophisticated equipment with limited scale. There is a need for corresponding automated production platforms for continuous manufacturing, which requires a concerted effort between the fields of materials science and machine automation. Lastly, the establishment of a fully integrated personalized healthcare system is essential to encompass diagnostic technology, treatment platforms, power supply networks, communication relays, and computing resources to facilitate closed-loop health management and remote patient care. The multidisciplinary nature of smart textiles in personalized medicine demands joint efforts among materials scientists, textile and clothing industry experts, regulatory bodies, clinicians, patients, user-interface developers, and government entities to optimize future development and integration.

Key words: smart textile, wearable system, health monitoring, disease treatment, healthcare