Title

Wearable sensing and AI for healthcare

Description

We seek to showcase recent advances in wearable sensing and artificial intelligence (AI) for healthcare. We welcome interdisciplinary contributions across smart textiles, electronic textiles, flexible and soft sensors, physiological monitoring, multimodal sensing, signal and image analysis, and AI-driven health assessment. Particular emphasis will be placed on research that moves beyond early-stage proof-of-concept devices towards solutions that are robust, practical, user-friendly, and clinically relevant for screening, monitoring, risk stratification, rehabilitation, and personalized care. Areas of interest include cardiovascular, respiratory, neurological, metabolic, and mobility-related applications, as well as wearable systems designed for home-based and remote care. We also encourage review and perspective articles that examine key translational challenges, including validation, reliability, usability, comfort, and implementation in real-world settings. By bringing together work spanning wearable materials, smart garments, sensing systems, and health AI, we aim to highlight research that meaningfully connects engineering innovation with unmet needs in healthcare.

Topics

We are soliciting original, unpublished research articles, reviews, and letters. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Smart textiles and electronic textiles for healthcare

• Flexible, stretchable, and soft wearable sensors

• Physiological monitoring using wearable systems

• AI for wearable data analysis and health assessment

• Multimodal sensing and data fusion for healthcare

• Wearable sensing for cardiovascular health

• Wearable sensing for respiratory health

• Wearable technologies for rehabilitation and mobility monitoring

• Remote monitoring and home-based healthcare

• Human-centered design, comfort, and usability of wearables

• Clinical validation of wearable technologies

• Personalized and AI-enabled healthcare systems

Content types

Article, review, perspective, letter, etc.

APCs

Article Publishing Charges (APCs) will be waived by December 2026. 

Deadline

December 31, 2026

Guest editors:

Pengpeng Hu Senior Lecturer

The University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom

Research area: Smart garments, wearable sensing, and digital health technologies for healthcare applications

Email: pengpeng.hu@manchester.ac.uk

YingLiang Ma  Associate Professor

University of East Anglia, Norwich, United Kingdom

Research area: Health AI, cardiovascular imaging, and clinically relevant medical image analysis

Email: Yingliang.ma@uea.ac.uk

Fengxin Sun  Associate Professor

Jiangnan University, Wuxi, China

Research area: Smart textiles, wearable sensing, textile actuators, and healthcare wearables

Email: fxsun@jiangnan.edu.cn

Xinghua Hong  Associate Professor

Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, Hangzhou, China

Research area: Electronic textiles, fiber functional materials, and wearable sensors for personal healthcare

Email: xinghuahong@zstu.edu.cn

Submission guidelines

Please submit your paper through our online submission system. All papers will be peer-reviewed. The submission deadline is December 31, 2026. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together. Research articles, review articles, letters, commentaries as well as perspectives are invited.

hLife adopts format-free submission. Format-free submission means that, provided you include everything necessary for review and use a consistent citation format, you can submit your paper without needing to worry about formatting your manuscript to meet hLife’s requirements.

Please state in the cover letter that your submission is for the section “Wearable sensing and AI for healthcare”. Article Publishing Charges (APCs) for received papers of hLife will be waived by December 2026. 

Submission website

https://www.editorialmanager.com/hlife