Tomorrow’s challenges demand new approaches:

Smart soft technology integration in medical devices

Making accessibility and affordability core to medtech product innovation in RPM, pain, sleep and respiratory care.
Change is often the result of disruption. If the COVID-19 pandemic has taught the healthcare community anything, it is that medical professionals must re-assess what works — and what does not — within the greater healthcare network.
While doctors, nurses and those who support them are working diligently to respond to public health threats, it is evident that much within the system requires revision. From COVID-19 and other infectious diseases to the rising toll of chronic illness, the world is facing an onslaught of health challenges. The health-care system and its personnel are overburdened. Cost is still a problem, and access to healthcare by the wider group of society is limited.
That’s why we at Softmatter are aware that enabling people to live more empowered lives through better health cannot happen without innovation and accessibility. From every step of the innovation and development process, to how we manufacture and distribute them, the path to this goal begins by developing life-changing technologies and products for accessibility and affordability.
Fortunately, advancements in technology are helping healthcare workers continue to provide exceptional care while simultaneously allowing them to adapt to new threats. Intuitive technological developments are helping those who support the medical community to create MedTech solutions and other medical devices that address the needs of vulnerable communities and expand public access to care.
This mindset already has allowed Softmatter to make meaningful progress in the type of solutions we have developed that has resulted in considerable gains: wearable systems for patient biometric analysis, thermal comfort and recovery technology, and more- are all examples of tools that have improved the day-to-day lives of healthcare professionals and their patients at affordable rates.
The Pragmatic Benefits of Smart Soft Technology
Smart soft systems such as wearable textile devices are more than a medical improvement. In fact, they are a pragmatic solution to longstanding production and distribution concerns within the healthcare system. The technology is intuitively designed with affordability and reproducibility in mind: the end-goal is to manufacture and deliver the maximum number of products to the greatest number of patients possible. It is also fast and easy to economically reproduce without sacrificing patient comfortability or product efficacy. As a result, smart soft medical devices benefit from both production and distribution cost-savings.
Doctors and patients alike will be pleased to know that wearable technology developed through smart textiles also provides exceptional biometric readings and real-time data analysis. These readings can help patients with potentially life-threatening conditions receive immediate care from experienced professionals.
Develop effective smart medical device with Softmatter
Softmatter is a smart textile technology manufacturer and product development company passionate about creating impactful medical devices that prioritize quality and user-centered design by integrating smart soft features. We build textile-based wearables that are simple and inexpensive to produce, comfortable and unobtrusive to patients, and provide powerful biometrics for doctors who want accurate, real-time data.

By partnering with our team of skilled engineering experts, MedTech companies can:

  • Meet FDA-I & II medical device regulations while accelerating time to market
  • Leverage collaborative expertise from experienced industry professionals
  • Design and build from concept to production
Our highly-skilled engineers and developers deliver a competitive difference with our on-site manufacturing facilities commit to ISO 9001 and 13485 standards.
We recognize that medical device company’s primary focus is safety, precision, and fully functional life of their product.
We enable solutions in:
Advanced materials: Elevated performance textile and surface modifications for devices (Water repellency and other resistive properties, enhanced grip for performance application, and silicon flocking for elevated hand feel). Selection of material that can conform to biocompatibility standards with full traceability.
Device finishes: replacing hard surfaces with soft forms for aesthetic product designs that complement medical needs and provide superior soft-touch feel. These include complex knit (flat, circular, warp) for zonal compression solutions, injection molding for better grip and impact protection, narrow width fabric strap solutions for zero skin markings and much more.
Smart features: Portfolio of patented technologies including textile sensing technology that allows for real-time biometric data tracking for a chronic illness, age, or sport. Device miniaturization, pressure sensing in wheelchairs and beds, amongst other healthcare needs. We bring the functionality of electronics together with the comfort and adaptability of textiles.
Actuators & electrodes: Our next-to-skin integrations of actuators and EC-12 compliant sensor electrodes offers sense stimuli from the environment and also reacts to them. These include phase change materials, shape memory materials, and touch textile applications.
Sleep and Respiratory Devices
Individuals with a pattern of sleep and respiratory issues often suffer from complex and difficult-to-treat medical histories due to a lack of accurate biometric data. Fortunately, wearable technology serves as a potential answer for these patients. Remote patient monitoring (RPM) allows physicians to understand and treat sleep-related disorders using unobtrusive technology that can be worn comfortably during sleep.
We are constantly developing products that works for the user and for the patient’s experience of health technology. For devices that are worn for extended sessions as with sleep and respiratory care, comfort is paramount to ensure adherence and long-term use. Textiles and soft form factors allow for the creation of entirely new comfortable next-to-skin products in the healthcare & wellness space.
Softmatter Smart EEG Headband
Driven by seamless integration, the head worn wearable that comprises of engineered knitting and sensors merged into a single solution, for data driven insights. The solution is also designed to be skin friendly and not hamper comfort when sleeping.
Softmatter Remote Monitoring Garment
Explores our capabilities around tracking respiratory metrics from afar. Here, we leverage ECG sensing that is integrated into an apparel form factor in a non-obtrusive manner, to pull signals from your heart. This concept has been created to assist care givers and patients, in monitoring real-time insights.
Softmatter Device Finishes
Beyond the pragmatic implications of wearable technology and smart textiles, the platforms also provide benefits for patients experiencing sleep loss and respiratory difficulties through smart fabric finishes. Constructions may come in the form of zonal compression, knit to shape, zero seams, and inlay technology in some use-cases.
For patients who battle sleep apnea everyday – we leverage our knitting capabilities to create solutions that enhances the patient’s comfort levels, when dealing with respiratory related ailments. We create fabric finishes for CPAP devices for comfort and zero skin marking, without compromising functionality. Our mask harness highlights our capabilities in creating solutions that may not necessarily use electronics, but instead focus on the need for long-lasting medical components that are easy to reuse as they are washable, breathable and offer convenience.
Pain and muscle recovery solutions
The intuitive design of wearable textiles may benefit another at-risk community within the healthcare system: patients who experience long term pain. Traditionally, individuals experiencing frequent pain and muscle injury are prescribed addictive and potentially life-inhibiting medications. Thermal therapy solutions may provide an alternative relief to such situations. The heating technology comprised of insulated conductive wires, fosters thermal pain relief to block off pain signals before they trigger a neurological response.
Our technologies offer varied configurations for pain management and muscle recovery needs. Systems may be built around compression garments with built in sensor technology for updates on health data, such as muscle activity, active and resting heart rate, breathing, or temperature levels. Alternatively, we are also able to explore Haptics, TENS and EMS technology to support pain management needs.
The implications of products such as these are numerous: individuals could utilize compression medical solutions during physical therapy, sleep, exercise and light everyday use.
Building Engineered Solutions:
New technology must always be integrated into the larger healthcare system for maximum efficiency. Fortunately, wearable technology lends itself well to rapid integration by both patients and physicians: convenience, ease-of-use, simple production and medical-grade benefits make the case for immediate introduction into an overburdened healthcare system that needs direct support.
It’s critical to select a product development partner that will help you satisfy FDA regulations while still that time to market in this heavily regulated industry. Do you want to make technology that prioritizes patient-centered architecture and quality? Connect with us to get your medical device production underway.
Softmatter is a leading global wearable technology company dedicated to solving the toughest smart soft engineering challenges. We enable our customers to interpret the world around us by intelligently bridging the smart with the soft with unmatched technologies that empower and connect.