Northwestern professor John Rogers has released a paper detailing his latest tiny, wearable, flexible, highly accurate health sensor, which monitors the heart, recognizes speech, and can enable human-machine interfaces. Professor Yonggang Huang is the corresponding author.
The soft, continuous monitor adheres to any part of the body, detecting mechanical waves that propagate through tissues and fluids in physiological activity — revealing acoustical signatures of individual events. These include the opening and closing of heart valves, vocal cord vibration, and gastrointestinal tract movement. ECG and EMG electrodes can also be integrated.
Obvious practical applications include remote health monitoring, enabling seniors to age in place, and battlefield health and robot/drone control. The vocal cord monitoring feature could also be used to assist the disabled communicate or control a keyboard.
Source: http://blog.applysci.com/?p=6155