Nanomaterials-Based Wearable Biosensors for Healthcare

We can define a wearable device as a sensor for the continuous and non-invasive detection of biosignals, analytes, or biomechanical and impact forces for monitoring human health and performance. These devices, started moving out of the medical centers to progressively enter in our daily routines in the last few years for sport, wellness, and health monitoring applications. The most known example is the continuous glucose monitor (CGM). However, wearable biosensors cover a much wider area of applications even if they are still at a research level. In the last 5 years the publications about wearable sensors have been 690. The biotechnology and chemistry contributions, talking about biosensors, is obvious. Furthermore, electronics and engineering play an important role in the miniaturization of the devices, the communication of the collected data, and the minimization of the electric consumption. What is usually less clear is the important contribution of nanotechnology and in particular of innovative nanomaterials and nanostructures to wearable biosensors. In this chapter, we will give an overview of the main characteristics of wearable biosensors for healthcare applications and we will explore the role of nanomaterials in their structure and use. Finally, we will discuss the challenges for the short- and mid-term with respect to the nanomaterials-based wearable biosensors introduction to society for healthcare applications.