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Engineers have developed a thin, soft stick-on patches that stretch and move with the skin incorporating off-the-shelf chip based electronics. These chips could be used for next-level wireless health monitoring.

The patches stick to the skin just like the temporary tattoo. These also incorporate a unique microfluidic construction with wires folded like origami that enables the patch to bend and flex without being constrained by the rigid electronics components.

Engineers said these patches could be used for everyday health tracking by wirelessly sending updates to the compatible devices.

"We designed this device to monitor human health 24/7, but without interfering with a person's daily activity," said Yonggang Huang, the Northwestern University professor who co-led the work with Illinois professor John A. Rogers, in the press release. "It is as soft as human skin and can move with your body, but at the same time it has many different monitoring functions. What is very important about this device is it is wirelessly powered and can send high-quality data about the human body to a computer, in real time."

The group of engineers also demonstrated skin electronics made of ver tiny, ultrathin printed components offering high-performance monitoring. 

"Our original epidermal devices exploited specialized device geometries - super thin, structured in certain ways," Rogers said in the press release. "But chip-scale devices, batteries, capacitors and other components must be re-formulated for these platforms. There's a lot of value in complementing this specialized strategy with our new concepts in microfluidics and origami interconnects to enable compatibility with commercial off-the-shelf parts for accelerated development, reduced costs and expanded options in device types."

The development of the invention has been published in the journal Science.