Whilst there have been no end of wearable innovations designed for professional and amateur athletes alike, there has also been a growing number of devices designed for the medical market.

For instance, we’ve got devices that monitor your sweat for illness, a head based device for monitoring both your diet and mental health, asthma monitors, heart monitors for cardiac problems, wearables specifically designed to monitor the health of the elderly, a wearable gyroscope for Parkinson’s sufferers, and many more.

Monitoring for posture

Innovations in this area are a fascinating mixture of stand-a-lone devices that are worn either on the body or attached to clothing, and devices that are built into the clothing itself.

An interesting new product in this latter category is a new device that aims to help those of us who suffer from poor posture.  The device, called FysioPal, uses sensors built into the fabric of a shirt that monitor our posture, and emit a small vibration when our posture is slouched.

The device is designed by Dutch designer Pauline van Dongen, and uses sensors sewn into an undershirt.  The sensors are harvesting information from the users back, shoulders and neck, and combines these to form an opinion on the posture of the user.

This information is then sent to a smartphone where the measurements can be tallied via the app that comes with the device.  What’s more, the device provides real-time feedback via vibrations to alert the user if their posture weakens so that they can correct things.

The app also provides the user with a number of posture training programs to try and improve things, whilst also providing analytics so you can see if your posture suffers at particular times of the day.

You can see a picture of the device above, and whilst it does look a little on the clunky side, I’m told in reality it is quite minimal.  It’s also designed to be machine washable, so should be both useful but also functional.

Would you wear such a device yourself?