Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2021 is underway, and companies didn’t miss this opportunity to showcase their upcoming or prototype products. ZTE capitalized on this and unveiled its YouCare project - a 5G Smart T-shirt that is capable of monitoring your vital health signs. 

ZTE YouCare 5G Smart T-Shirt Overview:

In recent years, wearables have gradually grown in popularity, especially due to their health monitoring features. Accordingly, there are countless products available in the market from various companies. ZTE, on the other hand, appears to take it a step further with their 5G enabled t-shirt.

Project

ZTE YouCare is a project that focuses on the use of textile devices for health monitoring, without the need for any metal components. The apparel, which is wholly made in Italy, can detect a number of bio-vital parameters and transmit them to the user's smartphone or smartwatch. The garment is fully washable, uses reusable textile material, and looks no different from a normal t-shirt.

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How does it work?

This 5G enabled T-shirt has a patented and certified textile technology that integrates a series of polymeric sensors embedded in the fabrics themselves. According to ZTE, these sensors can detect bio-vital parameters like respiration, electrocardiogram, sweat components, muscle effort, and the body temperature. Likewise, a miniature control unit records all these data and converts them to digital format. The company claims that these parameters have never been detected by a textile sensor before. Moreover, the t-shirt can transmit the analyzed data to an individual’s smartphone or smartwatch, thanks to 5G. You can even transmit the data to a remote unit that analyzes the values and notifies if there’s an emergency. Compared to traditional wearables, the YouCare t-shirt has a wider area of contact with the body. Thus, it can be used to record a wider range of health data. It could make drastic changes to the health sector because of its remote health monitoring feature. Furthermore, this initiative has piqued the interest of the Italian Red Cross Association president, who believes it has the potential to "change the life and quality of home and remote medical assistance."

ZTE YouCare 5G Smart T-Shirt Testing

ZTE will begin testing YouCare smart t-shirt from next fall at its 5G Research and Innovation Center in L'Aquila, Italy.

• Meanwhile, check out our review of TicWatch E3.