Wearable Optical Sensing in the Medical Internet of Things (MIoT) for Pervasive Medicine: Opportunities and Challenges

Recent advances in the Medical Internet of Things (MIoT) and big data enable a prospering platform for pervasive healthcare and facilitate the transformation from hospital-centered to human-centered healthcare. Wearable devices as human interfaces provide first-hand data and real-time monitoring, which are key technologies in the MIoT. Several remarkable surveys have been conducted to summarize the recent progress in wearable sensors and systems for the MIoT and pervasive medicine. However, few have focused on wearable optical sensing (WOS) technologies, which is an emerging sensing modality in wearable devices. WOS can achieve high precision, high compatibility, high anti-interference, and low motion artifacts for human vital signal acquisition, which are particularly useful in special scenarios such as intensive care units (ICUs). These technologies can also be integrated with smart fabrics or mobile computing for out-of-hospital healthcare. This work provides the first literature review of WOS for pervasive medicine. We aim to systematically summarize the emerging WOS technologies in the MIoT for disease diagnosis and health monitoring. Specifically, this review covers the technical bases and design principles of major WOS technologies and their application domains for monitoring and treatment. We also discuss the opportunities and challenges, especially in the COVID-19 outbreak.