September 08, 2006

Healthcare: Taiwan's Textiles Are RFID-Enhanced

The Taiwanese textile industry is experimenting with technologies and using RFID and solar panels in clothing. Part of the purpose of this hybrid technology is to enable sensors in the clothing to monitor measures such as heart rate, blood pressure and body temperature. RFID technology transmits this information back to a hospital computer system, although it's not clear whether a wearer needs to enter a hospital or visits some sort of data reader kiosk.The Taiwain Textile Research Institute has also managed to embed small, flexible solar panels into a leather jacket. The panels apparently generate enough energy to run a digtal music player. [via InfoWorld]

This is not the first time that RFID has been inserted into clothing, with one purpose being to prevent child abductions. Other purposes of RFID with clothing are for retail security tags and to retain item details.

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