A development firm in Texas is putting a new spin on the concept of wearable technology. The company, Chaotic Moon Studios, based in the city of Austin is combining sensors with conductive paint, and has now begun work on “tech tattoos” that turn body art into fully-functional health monitors.
The biometric tattoos, unlike their Fitbit and implant kin, are applied like a temporary tattoo. They are removable and capable of monitoring a range of factors, from heart rate to body temperature to location, Tech Radar reports.
“This is going beyond what the fitness tracker is,” says Eric Schneider, creative technologist for Chaotic Moon. “This is something you can put on your body once a year that monitors everything [a clinic] would do in a physical, and sends that to your doctor. If there’s an issue, they could just call you.”
Schneider also mentions uses for the tech tattoos in banking, saying that keeping financial information attached to your skin would be less vulnerable than inside a loose wallet.
Ben Lamm, CEO of Chaotic Moon, agrees on the bio-wearables’ wide array of uses.
“We think there are military applications for [bio-wearbles], health applications for it and there are all kinds of opportunities around it,” says Lamm in a TechCrunch report. “It’s a platform that basically turns you into a human circuit board.”
While the tech is still in a prototype stage, the possibilities of having cyborg-like augmentations without the need of surgery raises possible questions about the future of medical monitoring and care. However, the industry is still in its infancy and thus don’t expect products like this coming on the market in the next 12 months. As time progresses, tech companies like Chaotic Moon are likely to team up with large electronics and medical manufacturers to kick-start this new industry.
