Cogent Engineering

Wearable Devices for Healthcare and Medical Monitoring: Emerging Technologies, Biometrics, AI, and Clinical Applications

Wearable devices are transforming the landscape of modern healthcare by enabling continuous, real-time monitoring of physiological, behavioral, and environmental parameters. Advances in miniaturized sensors, flexible materials, embedded systems, and wireless communication have accelerated the development of intelligent wearable technologies capable of supporting preventive medicine, early diagnosis, and personalized therapeutic interventions. From smart textiles and biosignal acquisition systems to hearables and rehabilitation-oriented devices, wearables are increasingly integrated into clinical workflows and remote patient monitoring ecosystems. Simultaneously, the convergence of biomedical engineering, artificial intelligence, cyber-physical systems, and data science is enabling wearable platforms to evolve from simple tracking tools into adaptive, decision-support technologies. This Article Collection aims to bring together cutting-edge engineering research that advances the design, modelling, validation, and deployment of wearable devices for healthcare and medical monitoring applications.

Healthcare systems worldwide face mounting challenges, including aging populations, chronic disease prevalence, rising costs, and the need for decentralized care models. Wearable technologies offer scalable solutions that support early risk detection, continuous monitoring outside hospital settings, and data-driven clinical decision-making. By integrating machine learning, intelligent signal processing, and edge computing, wearable systems can enhance diagnostic accuracy, improve patient engagement, and enable personalized digital therapeutics. These technologies are particularly impactful in areas such as cardiovascular monitoring, diabetes management, neurodegenerative disease support, rehabilitation, and elderly care. Moreover, the engineering challenges associated with reliability, ergonomics, energy efficiency, data security, and regulatory compliance require rigorous multidisciplinary research. Advancing wearable healthcare systems is therefore not only a technological imperative but also a societal necessity, with the potential to significantly improve health outcomes, optimize resource allocation, and foster innovation across biomedical, mechanical, electrical, and computational engineering domains.

This Collection welcomes original research articles, review articles, rapid communications, software papers, and replication studies addressing engineering-driven innovations in wearable healthcare technologies. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Advanced biosensors (ECG, PPG, EEG, EMG, multimodal sensing)
• Smart textiles and flexible materials
• Low-power embedded architectures
• Signal processing and AI-based predictive modelling
• Cyber-physical and edge computing systems
• Wearable devices for chronic disease management
• Rehabilitation engineering
• Digital therapeutics
• Remote patient monitoring
• Clinical validation methodologies
• Ergonomic and mechanical design modelling
• Human–device interaction
• Secure data integration within healthcare infrastructures

Contributions that bridge theoretical modelling with experimental validation, prototype development, or real-world clinical application are particularly encouraged. Interdisciplinary studies that connect biomedical engineering, computer science, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and systems & control are especially welcome, in line with the multidisciplinary scope of the journal.

Keywords: Wearable devices, Biomedical engineering, Artificial intelligence in healthcare, Remote patient monitoring, Digital therapeutics

­­All manuscripts submitted to this Article Collection will undergo a full peer-review; the Guest Advisor for this Collection will not be handling the manuscripts (unless they are an Editorial Board member).

Please review the journal scope and author submission instructions prior to submitting a manuscript.

The deadline for submitting manuscripts is 03 December 2026.

Please contact Hang Ke at [email protected] with any queries and discount codes regarding this Article Collection.

Please be sure to select the appropriate Article Collection from the drop-down menu in the submission system.

Vítor H. Carvalho is currently working as a visiting researcher at Aalborg University, Denmark, as an associate (tenured) professor with habilitation at the Polytechnic University of Cávado and Ave (IPCA), Barcelos, Portugal, as well as an integrated researcher of the Applied Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (2Ai) at IPCA and collaborator of the Algoritmi Research Centre at Minho University. His main fields of interest are related to data acquisition systems, serious games, and machine learning. He has published more than 200 papers, being also a member of the editorial board of several international conferences and journals.

Demétrio Matos is an Adjunct Professor at the School of Design (ESD) of the Polytechnic Institute of Cávado and Ave (IPCA). He is an integrated researcher at ID+ Research Institute for Design, Media and Culture, where his work focuses on the intersection of design practice, technology, and material culture. His main scientific and pedagogical interests include industrial design, health design, medical device design, human enhancement, and inclusive design, with a particular emphasis on the relationship between the body, technology, and well-being.

Pedro Morais is an Assistant PhD Researcher at 2Ai-IPCA. In 2019, he received a Ph.D. degree in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Porto, Portugal, and Biomedical Sciences from KU Leuven, Belgium (Doctoral thesis under co-supervision). His main interests are imaging processing, image segmentation, image-guided minimally invasive interventions, image tracking, image fusion, robotics, and biomedical applications.

José Machado is Deputy Director of MEtRICs Research Center and Associate Professor with Habilitation at the Mechanical Engineering Department of the University of Minho. His main interests are related to Industry 4.0, more specifically, on the design and development of Cyber-Physical Systems, design and analysis of dependable controllers for obtaining dependable mechatronic systems, and mechatronic systems design with special focus on manufacturing industry and medical or biomedical applications, wellbeing, and/or rehabilitation. He is a member of the IEEE, IFAC, and IFToMM.

Filomena Soares works at the Industrial Electronics Department of Minho University, and she has developed her research work in the R&D Algoritmi Centre since 1992. Her main scientific interests are in the areas of System Modeling and Control, with application to biomedical processes, and in the area of automation systems. She is a member of several technical and scientific organizations, with management responsibility in some of them, namely the IEEE Affinity Group Women in Engineering (WIE), of which she was co-founder and chair.