We’ve been wearing smartwatches and fitness bands for years, but have you ever imagined a chip as flexible as your skin and thinner than paper that could monitor your heartbeat? Researchers from Tsinghua and Peking Universities in China have turned this imagination into reality by creating a chip called ‘FLEXI’.
What is ‘FLEXI’ and why is it special?
The chips currently inside our smartwatches are rigid and fragile. They cannot be bent and consume a lot of power. But FLEXI is a ‘family’ of chips specifically designed to bend and work with body parts.
Its biggest feature is that this chip does not get damaged even after being folded thousands of times. It is so thin that it can be fitted inside smart clothing or directly onto a skin patch.
Power saving and super-fast processing
Typically, wearable devices send data to an external computer or the cloud for processing, which consumes both time and battery. FLEXI has changed this ‘old pattern’:
In-chip processing: Instead of sending data elsewhere, this chip processes the data directly on its own circuits.
Less energy, more work: Due to its special design, this chip consumes less than 1% of the power of a standard chip. This means you might not need to charge your smartwatch every day anymore.
Real-world test: Up to 99% accurate results
The scientists didn’t limit it to the lab. When tested on volunteers, the results were astonishing:
Heart health: It identified ‘irregular heartbeats’ (arrhythmia) with 99.2% accuracy. Activity Tracking: It was 97.4% accurate in tracking activities such as cycling and walking.
‘Affordable and Durable’ for the Average Person’s Pocket
New technology is often very expensive, but that’s not the case with FLEXI. Researchers claim that when manufactured on a large scale, each chip will cost less than $1 (approximately 84 rupees). It is not only affordable but also capable of withstanding significant stress and mechanical strain.
Conclusion: The arrival of the FLEXI chip indicates that in the future, our health monitoring devices will become so comfortable and invisible that we won’t even realize we’re wearing them. This technology could prove to be a boon for medical science and athletes.
