Whole garment knitting equipment for e-textile wearable healthcare applications

E-textiles are advanced textiles with integrated electronic functionality ranging from conductive interconnections to sensing/actuating, signal processing, and wireless communications. Emerging advanced e-textiles technologies offer a revolutionary new platform for wearable healthcare devices, the market for which is projected to reach $30.1 billion by 2026 from $16.2 billion in 2021.

Textile materials are soft, breathable, comfortable to wear, and familiar to the wearer. Making textiles into a garment (e.g. vest, sleeve) provides an easy to wear solution and, via design and material selection, improved aesthetics. E-textile wearable devices will improve the user experience and increase user compliance to monitoring and treatment leading to improved quality of life and reduced healthcare costs.

Examples of healthcare applications include health monitoring (e.g. heart rate, breathing, temperature) and treatment (e.g. pain relief, rehabilitation).

WHOLEGARMENT knitting equipment is a computerized machine that is capable of knitting smart garments in their entirety without seams. It has been widely used in the fashion industry for knitting clothing items. It has demonstrated the capacity to knit e-textiles for healthcare applications, for example, the electrocardiogram (ECG) garment knitted using textile yarns and conductive yarns.

The WHOLEGARMENT knitting equipment is suitable for producing a range of garments with carefully designed properties such as thickness, stretchability, and breathability. The fully automated system reduces human errors and faulty garments. The design software allows 3D simulation and virtual sampling; reducing the number of physical sample iterations and lead time.

The design can be changed easily to meet individuals' needs allowing mass-customisation at a low cost for personalised e-textile healthcare products.

This project aims to acquire a Shima Seiki WHOLEGARMENT equipment for e-textiles healthcare research which aligns with the Medical Research Council strategic priorities in applied health research, neuroscience and mental health, and population and system medicines. It will also support our current funded transitional research projects on medical product development including an electrotherapy and sensing e-textile for osteoarthritis pain management and a wearable sensor for respiration monitoring.

Both projects will develop their ISO 13485 Quality Management System and Technical Documentation to demonstrate regulatory compliance which is essential for commercialisation to capture societal and economic benefits. The use of the WHOLEGARMENT equipment will improve prototype/product quality, ensure industrial relevance and scalability, and cost effectiveness for customised designs.

The proposed equipment will provide opportunities for Research Technical Professionals to access state-of-the-art industrial equipment, contribute to the delivery of current research projects and innovative ideas for future projects, and collaborate with multi-disciplinary project teams and external collaborators. The skills and experience built on e-textiles healthcare research will improve their employability and competitiveness because it is a fast-growing niche area.

Sustainability is firmly embedded in all our research to minimise the impact on the environment. This is achieved through using sustainable materials and advanced manufacturing (e.g. the proposed WHOLEGARMENT equipment) to reduce waste. The prototypes/products are designed for long term use and can be disassembled and recycled when they arrive at the end of the life cycle.

E-textile wearable healthcare products will enable people to manage their health conditions at home freeing resources in hospitals and reducing hospital visits. These will contribute to reducing the carbon emissions associated with the hospital stay and patient travel.