Growing scenario in healthcare Textile Dr. Amsamani S.*, Associate Professor, Ms. Priya B. Sangeetha**, Ph.D Research Scholar *Department of Textiles and Clothing, Avinashilingam Institute for Home Science and Higher Education for Women. **Department of Textiles and Clothing, Avinashilingam Institute for Home Science and Higher Education for Women. Online published on 3 January, 2012. Abstract Health care is the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in humans. Health care is delivered by practitioners in medicine, chiropractic, dentistry, nursing, pharmacy, allied health and other care providers. Healthcare sector is one of largest sectors in India, in terms of revenue and employment. During the 1990s, Indian healthcare grew at a compound annual rate of 16%. Today the total value of this sector is more than $34 billion. This translates to $34 per capita or roughly 6% of GDP. By 2012, India's healthcare sector is projected to grow to nearly $40 billion. The private sector accounts for more than 80% of total healthcare spending in India. Health care textile is one of the fastest growing segments of the world. Very distinctive feature of health care textiles is that, it can make value addition as to ever application and end users. At the same time, it is a diverse and dynamic one, having wide range of materials, processes, products and application. The last decade has witnessed a rapid increase of interest in new sensing and monitoring devices including wearable wireless devices and sensor networks for several personal applications especially in healthcare, well being, lifestyle, protection and safety. Smart Wearable Systems (SWS) are sensor-based integrated systems on body-worn platforms offering pervasive personalized solutions for continuous, non-invasive monitoring of body and external parameters, including feedback to the user. Today they are available either in the reach and development prototype (the majority) or commercial products. Furthermore, new developments emerging from the miniaturization of electronics and materials processing have being leading to the integration of multiple smart functions into textiles without being a burden. This paper presents and discusses the main issues involved in the development of the health care textiles, user requirements, technologies, research and development of integrated systems as well as future challenges to be met in order to reach a market with reliable and high value-added products. Top |