Towards a Flexible Wrist-Worn Thermotherapy and Thermoregulation Device

Body temperature is one of the vital parameters and the most common measurand for physiological monitoring. Heat has been used from ancient times as a medicinal and healing modality. It can be used generally for pain relief and can be particularly useful to arthritis patients, while it can be beneficial for battling dermatological and surgical site infections. Thermoregulation is essential for homeostasis and for sustaining body temperature. In this paper we present a wrist-worn flexible device integrating temperature sensing and heating capabilities for localized temperature measurements, heating for thermotherapy and closed-loop thermoregulation in the hands. The latter is useful for sustain hand temperature within healthy limits in extreme environments. The temperature sensing and heating capabilities of the device are characterized and presented in detail. We finally present a precise study of the effect of bending to the proposed device.