Wearable Tech Comes to the Horse World

As a society we are addicted to technology, our phones are glued to our hands for much of the day, our vehicles respond to voice commands, and we can monitor our homes from thousands of miles away.

We also love our so-called “wearable tech” to keep track of how many steps we take in a day, or to monitor our heart rate while we exercise. And thanks to a group of engineers and vets at Purdue University in Indiana, wearable tech is no longer just for humans; the equine world is also seeing innovation in the use of nanotechnology to continually assess horse health.

A study published by the group at Purdue University involved using a common stable blanket and turning it into what is known as an “e-textile” that is capable of monitoring a horse’s cardiac, respiratory and muscular systems. In an article published on the university website, “adding e-textile properties to existing garments helps scientists, researchers and clinicians take advantage of garments’ already-existing ergonomic designs to secure a commercial grade of wearability, comfortability, air permeability and machine washability.”

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Horse-Canada spoke with the leading author of the study, Chi Hwan Lee, an associate professor in Purdue’s Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, as well as appointments in the School of Mechanical Engineering and School of Materials Engineering, about the special blanket and real world applications.

Lee explained that the team applied what is called a programmable dual-regime spray onto the blanket directly. “The dual-regime spray is a type of spraying technique that allows you to directly write conductive nanoparticles into fabrics at high resolution (< 1 mm line widths),” Lee says. “We used this spray technique to write sensor arrays across the surface of the horse blanket.” Specially designed pre-programmed patterns of sensors on the inside of the blanket read the vital signs which can then be transmitted to a laptop via Bluetooth technology.

As the images show, the study used a very tight-fitting blanket, the type often used as “underwear” to prevent blanket rubs or to keep show horses clean and braids intact. This was an important choice for the study. “We used “stretchy” horse blankets that form tight, intimate contact to the skin, which is important to capture biosignals without significant noises [interference],” Lee says. He also adds that as long as regular stable sheets can form a tight interface with the skin they can be used, too.

The purpose of the study and of the group’s work isn’t specifically just for horses; their approach is to use the same technology for human clothing and small animal blankets as well. Horses were chosen simply to show the scalability of their approach. The real-world applications are obvious: consider being able to constantly assess a sick or injured animal (or human) for signs of stress or trauma.

“The e-textiles are capable of monitoring vital signals such as heart and muscle activities, respiration rates, etc., from the skin under ambulatory conditions in a continuous and unobtrusive manner simply by using ordinary clothing,” Lee explains. “For instance, the continuous monitoring of respiration rate from horses with asthma, even during sleep overnight, would be greatly helpful in care, particularly from a distance in a wirelessly (i.e., Bluetooth) controlled fashion. Monitoring the signals from a herd of horses is possible.”

This type of tech would be extremely helpful for veterinary hospitals, but also horse owners could make use of the technology at their own farms and reduce costly visits to a clinic. As for next steps, Lee says the team is currently focused on the real-world application of the e-textiles in monitoring vital signals from horses in ICU, and continuous 24-hour remote monitoring of respiration rates from horses with asthma, “which will validate the utility of our approach in current clinical settings.”