unsw engineers developed AusculPatch, a wearable sensor patch that measures heart and lung activity. The patch is 20 x 47 x 3 millimetres and weighs 3.2 grams. It is small enough to sit on the chest or over peripheral arteries while collecting signals outside a clinic.
Hoang-Phuong Phan’s signal test
Hoang-Phuong Phan, the Scientia Associate Professor leading the project, said the team is sorting out which signals matter most in care. “A key focus of our current research is determining which signals are most clinically meaningful and how they can support decision-making without adding burden to healthcare providers.”
The device captures subtle mechanical vibrations from the heart, lungs, blood flow and pulse waves. It can also pick up extremely low-frequency vibrations that existing wearable technologies struggle to measure, which is the difference between a patch that mostly logs motion and one that can track cardiorespiratory signals continuously.
Nature Communications testing
The proof-of-concept work appeared in Nature Communications. In laboratory and early human testing, AusculPatch readings were broadly consistent with electrocardiograms, ultrasound systems, blood pressure monitors and digital stethoscopes.
Researchers also reported that the patch kept recording clear heart sounds in noisy settings, including conversations and simulated background noise. It continued to capture cardiorespiratory data while participants walked, worked, ate and climbed stairs, which is the kind of use pattern a home monitor has to survive if it is meant to move beyond the lab.
UNSW and Apostele
The team is working with UNSW spin-off Apostele to explore a digital health platform that combines acoustic and cardiopulmonary data. The patch also detected vocal cord vibrations from the throat, and machine-learning techniques let the system recognise spoken words and wirelessly control a robotic arm.
Phan said the next patient study will “determine whether it can identify abnormal cardiopulmonary patterns, such as heart valve abnormalities that generate characteristic murmur sounds, and detect clinically meaningful changes over time, while remaining comfortable and practical for home use.” The team plans to evaluate AusculPatch in approximately 200 patients with heart valve disease or implanted heart assist devices.
Before large-scale deployment, Phan said, “further work is needed to validate the technology in larger patient populations, establish manufacturing scalability and regulatory approvals, and develop appropriate data governance and clinical implementation frameworks.” For readers, that means the patch has moved past proof-of-concept, but the practical questions now sit in patient testing, manufacturing and approval work.
