Volume 2 Issue 8, August 2019

Ethical codes, ethics committees, and respect for autonomy have been key to the development of medical ethics — elements that digital ethics would be advised to emulate.

In vivo sensors can be interrogated using a wireless system locked to an exceptional point, providing a sensitivity beyond the capabilities of standard wireless readout schemes.

Amplifiers based on flexible thin-film electronics can provide healthcare monitoring systems with high signal-to-noise ratios.

A wearable wireless sensor network for personalized healthcare can be created through the indirect integration of soft on-skin sensors and rigid in-clothes circuits.

This Perspective examines key ethical challenges of ingestible electronic sensors, which are related to patients, physicians, and society more generally, and provides a comparative analysis of legal regulation of the sensors in the US and Europe.

A reconfigurable wireless system locked to an exceptional point can be used to interrogate in vivo inductor–capacitor microsensors with a sensitivity 3.2 times beyond the limit of conventional readout schemes.

An integrated circuit amplifier, which is fabricated in a commercial complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) process, can record both voltages and currents with performance that exceeds commercial benchtop instrumentation.

An ultraflexible organic differential amplifier, which is only 2 μm thick and can conform to a person’s skin, can be used to record electrocardiograms with a signal-to-noise ratio of 34 dB.

By integrating wireless stretchable on-skin sensor tags and flexible readout circuits attached to textiles using an unconventional radiofrequency identification design, a body area sensor network can be created that can continuously analyse a person’s pulse, breathing and body movement.