Aid of Smart Nursing to Pressure Injury Prevention and Rehabilitation of Textile Cushions

Abstract

Real-time monitoring of pressure and temperature in wheelchair patients is an effective method for preventing and rehabilitating pressure injuries. Nevertheless, few rehabilitation devices capable of monitoring temperature and pressure have been reported. Herein, we propose a fully textile-based scalable and designable dual-mode rehabilitation cushion for real-time monitoring of pressure and temperature. The different signal output modes (resistive and capacitive signals) enable noninterference between pressure and temperature. The cushion exhibits a wide pressure monitoring range of 2–160 kPa, a high sensitivity of 8.8399 kPa⁻¹, and a repeatable stability exceeding 10,000 cycles. In addition, the cushion demonstrates excellent temperature responsiveness with a linearity of 0.995 and a TCR of 0.019 s°C⁻¹. Furthermore, an intelligent monitoring system integrated with machine learning has been developed to realize large-range multipoint sensing and data visualization. The system can accurately recognize different sitting postures with an accuracy of 99.65%. Human application evaluations have demonstrated the feasibility of this cushion for preventing pressure injuries, which can stimulate further research on pressure injury prevention and rehabilitation in the future.

Graphical Abstract