Wearable and Miniaturized Sensor Technologies for Personalized and Preventive Medicine

The unprecedented medical achievements of the last century have dramatically improved our quality of life. Today, the high cost of many healthcare approaches challenges their long-term financial sustainability and translation to a global scale. The convergence of wearable electronics, miniaturized sensor technologies, and big data analysis provides novel opportunities to improve the quality of healthcare while decreasing costs by the very early stage detection and prevention of fatal and chronic diseases. Here, some exciting achievements, emerging technologies, and standing challenges for the development of non-invasive personalized and preventive medicine devices are discussed. The engineering of wire- and power-less ultra-thin sensors on wearable biocompatible materials that can be placed on the skin, pupil, and teeth is reviewed, focusing on common solutions and current limitations. The integration and development of sophisticated sensing nanomaterials are presented with respect to their performance, showing exemplary implementations for the detection of ultra-low concentrations of biomarkers in complex mixtures such as the human sweat and breath. This review is concluded by summarizing achievements and standing challenges with the aim to provide directions for future research in miniaturized medical sensor technologies.