As the life expectancy of individuals increases with recent advancements in medicine and quality of living, it is important to monitor the health of patients and healthy individuals on a daily basis. This is not possible with the current health care system in North America, and thus there is a need for wireless devices that can be used from home. These devices are called biomedical wearables, and they have become popular in the last decade. There are several reasons for that, but the main ones are: expensive health care, longer wait times, and an increase in public awareness about improving quality of life. With this, it is vital for anyone working on wearables to have an overall understanding of how they function, how they were designed, their significance, and what factors were considered when the hardware was designed. Therefore, this study attempts to investigate the hardware components that are required to design wearable devices that are used in the emerging context of the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT). This means that they can be used, to an extent, for disease monitoring through biosignal capture. In particular, this review study covers the basic components that are required for the front-end of any biomedical wearable, and the limitations that these wearable devices have. Furthermore, there is a discussion of the opportunities that they create, and the direction that the wearable industry is heading in.

Electronic point scoring systems (PSS) for vests are heavily relied upon in taekwondo. However, no classification and assessment of legal and illegal taekwondo techniques exist. This is also referred to as hit-validation and the objective of this research is to create an electronic helmet (eHelmet) for hit-validation. Three main studies were performed to achieve this objective: Robustness Testing, Sensor Placement and Classification of Impacts to the head. The first two studies are preliminary to the main Classification of Impacts study. This is needed as no data sets using an IMU are currently available for taekwondo. Robustness Testing: proved that IMU can in-fact be used in the inherently harsh environments of taekwondo with a linear response. The calculated response for the IMU is: f(x) = mx + b, where m is 0.2947 and b is 1.499 (accelerometer) and f(x) = mx + b, where m is 28.33 and b is 84.8 (gyroscope). Sensor Placement: Qualitatively and quantitatively concluded the ideal location for the sensor and electronics is indeed the back of the head, based on durability, cost, human factors, and signal quality. Classification of Impacts: IMU classified real-world impacts with 90% accuracy. The two classes were roundhouse kick (legal) and punch (illegal). An eHelmet using an IMU is capable of classifying impacts with high accuracy. The benefit of our system includes low cost, lightweight algorithm for on-device computing (edge computing), and real-time classification. Furthermore, it possesses all the safety requirements of current protective headgear.