This patch can tell if you’ll get sick soon

Electronic patches that stick to the skin like a temporary tattoo are the future of health monitoring. 

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Northwestern University developed the flexible patches, which are designed to send updates about the human body to computers in real time.

Here’s what the researchers said in a news release:

"We designed this device to monitor human health 24/7, but without interfering with a person's daily activity," said Yonggang Huang, the Northwestern University professor who co-led the work with Illinois professor John A. Rogers. "It is as soft as human skin and can move with your body, but at the same time it has many different monitoring functions. What is very important about this device is it is wirelessly powered and can send high-quality data about the human body to a computer, in real time."

But designing the patch wasn’t easy. All the tiny wires and electronic components, including radios and sensors, had to allow movement, and the researchers needed to fold all the wires in origami-like patterns.

This is how News Bureau Illinois explains it: 

One of the biggest engineering feats of the patch is the design of the tiny, squiggly wires connecting the electronics components – radios, power inductors, sensors and more. The serpentine-shaped wires are folded like origami, so that no matter which way the patch bends, twists or stretches, the wires can unfold in any direction to accommodate the motion. Since the wires stretch, the chips don't have to.

Besides tracking every move and every heartbeat to create a picture of our health, the device can help to identify future health problems, including Parkinson’s disease.