Thread-based computer could be knitted into clothes to monitor health

Stretchy computers on threads that can be stitched into clothes could be used to record whole-body data that most medical sensors can't pick up. Wearable technologies, such as smartwatches, monitor signals from the body like heart rate or temperature, but typically only from a single spot. This can give an incomplete picture of how the body is functioning. Now, Yoel Fink at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his colleagues have developed a computer that can be stitched into clothes, made from chips that are connected in a thread of copper and elastic fibre. The thread has 256 kilobytes of on-board memory, around that of a simple calculator, as well as sensors that can detect temperature, heart rate and body movements.