The Canadian Space Agency just signed a $2.4m deal with Carré Technologies to test a smart shirt that can be remotely monitored via several sensors from extremely far distances.
The shirt is designed to keep track of the wearer’s health and will be worn by Canadian astronaut, David Saint-Jacques, during a six-month space mission aboard the International Space Station, that is set for 2018-2019.
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The smart shirt, named Astroskin, gathers health data on activity levels, vital signs, including blood oxygen levels, blood pressure, heart rate and electrical activity, along with rate of breathing and sleep quality.
Co-founder and chief executive of Carré Technologies, Pierre-Alexandre Fournier, explains, “Deploying our wearable sensors and software to the ISS is significant as this represents the ultimate remote patient monitoring scenario. The findings tracking the health of astronauts will be used to make our healthcare system more accessible and support new home care and telemedicine services.”
Astroskin has a future here on earth
The creators of Astroskin are already considering the technology’s future in sleep treatment and cardiology and are planning to use the data gathered from the ISS test to, hopefully, bring the smart shirt to the medical world for health monitoring of patients in remote areas of the world.
Marc Garneau, Canadian minister for transport, states, “Astroskin may have many applications on Earth, such as medical monitoring of those confined to their homes by illness, people living in remote areas with limited medical access, and those working in hazardous environments. It is another in a long list of space technologies brought down to Earth for all of us.”
