Japanese scientist builds skin message display

Japanese scientists have unveiled the latest version of skin message display. Professor Takao Someya and his team from the University of Tokyo have developed a device that can be stuck on the body like a second skin, reported AFP. The band-aid like the device is just one millimeter thick and it can monitor health data and send and receive messages.

The device is made of 16-by-24 array of micro LEDs and elastic wiring on a rubber sheet. It also has a lightweight sensor composed of a breathable "nanomesh" electrode and a wireless communication module. It can be placed in the human body for about a week without any inflammation and is light enough to carry its weight.

Someya told, “With this, even in home-care settings, you can achieve seamless sharing of medical data with your home doctors, who then would be able to communicate back to their patients." "Place displays on your skin, and you would feel as if it is part of your body. When you have messages sent to your hand, you would feel an emotional closeness to the sender,” he added.

Someya believes that the invention could eventually lead to wearable displays for joggers to monitor heart rates or check running routes. It would be particularly beneficial for the Japanese population that is rapidly ageing, replacing the need for in-person checks by offering continuous, non-invasive monitoring of the sick and frail.

He developed the device mutually with Japanese printing giant Dai Nippon Printing, which hopes to put it on the market within three years and will be showcased at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Texas over the weekend.