At TechBlick 2026, Wim Christiaens, general manager at Quad Industries, shared what it truly takes to move from an innovative wearable concept to reliable, high-volume manufacturing. TechBlick 2026 was held in the Computer History Museum, California.
Quad Industries: from concept to production
Quad Industries has been active in printed electronics for about 30 years. The company is headquartered in Belgium, with a manufacturing facility in Žilina, Slovakia. Printed electronics is used across a wide range of applications, from user interfaces and touch foils to sensor applications, but the main growth area today is medical wearables.
What Quad offers customers is the ability to take concepts from development stage all the way through to high-volume manufacturing, supported by a strong R&D base.
The rise of the smart patches
There is a strong acceleration in skin-mounted patches for medical applications, driven by three areas: diagnosis, remote patient monitoring, and therapy and stimulation applications.
Key advantages of patch-based systems are that they enable continuous monitoring of biosignals with good signal quality, while remaining unobtrusive. Patients can use them anywhere: at home, not only in hospital.
Applications on the recording side include cardiac monitoring, sleep monitoring, anaesthesia monitoring, neurological (EEG) monitoring, and muscle activity monitoring , all already in volume manufacturing today. On the stimulation side, rehabilitation and revalidation (such as stroke patients) and treatments for conditions like migraine, opioid treatment, and phantom pain relief are rapidly emerging.
Printed electronics is the key enabler for these smart patches. It allows electronics to be integrated into a wide range of materials in a straightforward way, ensuring comfortability and soft integration on skin. It is also a scalable and cost-effective technology , which matters in a disposable market.
Two real-world examples
Holter monitoring
Holter monitoring is one of the earliest and most successful smart patch applications. A Holter monitor is a portable device enabling continuous monitoring of a patient’s heart activity, typically over 24 hours or a few days.
Before the Holter was invented, ECGs were only checked in hospital : spot checks that gave only a snapshot of the heart’s behaviour. Cardiac events do not happen continuously, so longer-term monitoring is essential. Norman Holter invented the first wearable Holter monitor in 1947. That first version was a backpack weighing 38 kg. Over the following decades, electronics were miniaturised into compact digital recorders connected with wires and standard ECG patches. The latest generation is now fully integrated skin-mounted patches : light, unobtrusive, worn at home for multiple days, enabling screening of cardiac patients.
Sleep monitoring
The current gold standard for sleep monitoring is a sleep study in a specialised laboratory, where the patient wears many electrodes connected to a miniaturised device and attempts to sleep in a hospital for one night. The challenge is that you want to measure the patient’s natural sleep behaviour , which is difficult to replicate in a clinical setting. Longer-term monitoring is also needed: a single eight-hour hospital session is often not sufficient for a full diagnosis.
This is driving the development of home sleep testing, where wearable patches , typically mounted on the forehead, allow sleep behaviour to be monitored over multiple days in the patient’s own home environment, giving a far more representative result.
A smart patch is a complex product
A smart patch consists of several integrated components:
- Substrate: flexible strips of PET or soft stretchable substrates of TPU, on which inks are printed to form electrodes and interconnections.
- Skin adhesive: medical-grade adhesives that attach the circuit to the skin, selected specifically for the application. The requirements for a 20-minute monitoring session are entirely different from those for a seven-day patch, and adhesives also need to be tuned to the skin type : a baby’s skin is completely different from an adult’s.
- Electrode material: ensuring good electrical contact with the skin, typically a hydrogel or a conductive adhesive.
- Interconnection technology: connecting the patch to the readout electronics, via snap buttons, pogo pin interconnects, custom plastic connectors, or other solutions.
A patch may seem simple, but combining all these elements requires understanding the full system: all components need to work together on the body.
Four differentiators for scalable wearable patch platforms
Quad identifies four key differentiators for building successful wearable patch platforms: Innovation, Expertise, Speed, and Scalability.
1. Innovation
Quad has invested in a highly skilled engineering team based at its Belgian headquarters: engineers and PhD-level experts in materials and product development. They work in a dedicated R&D facility with access to real production equipment, so developments are directly transferable to volume manufacturing, not fancy prototypes that cannot survive the transition to production.
R&D runs across several frameworks: bilateral co-development with customers, internal IP programmes, a technology roadmap, and funded projects on longer-horizon developments. One example is the European Smart NeoNATO project, focused on monitoring solutions for preterm babies within the first 30 seconds after birth. Developing patches for such fragile skin builds knowledge that benefits all customers.
2. Expertise
Quad has focused on wearable patches for more than 10 years and continuously evaluates materials on both the printed electronics side and the skin adhesive side. Different electrode stackups and material combinations are continuously benchmarked.
This benchmarking takes place in the Quad Skin Lab, which offers test capabilities for both internal validation and customer product validation. Tests include: ANSI/AAMI EC12, high-potential test for defibrillators, shelf-life testing, MVTR breathability test, impedance testing, peel strength, sweat test, wear test, and stretch test. The result is a library of validated materials that Quad can draw from and advise customers on.
3. Speed
Agility in the development phase is critical: it is where the most time can be gained. From day one, Quad’s engineers work directly with the customer’s development team. Prototypes are produced in a dedicated prototype facility with a target of delivering a validation-ready prototype within four weeks of concept. This enables rapid iterations: the customer evaluates, provides feedback, and a next iteration can follow within a month.
4. Scalability
Smart patches are disposable items, often single-use, so cost is critical. Designing for cost and selecting the right “good enough” technology combination must happen from the start. Typical production volumes range from a few thousand pieces per year up to above one million pieces, which demands automated manufacturing, stable processing, and strong process engineering. Quality and yield are essential.
The road to volumes in the medical market
From wearable concept to first volume production takes a minimum of five years, often more. Understanding and supporting customers through every phase of that journey is essential. The journey runs through six stages:
- Concept: sitting together with the customer to define the approach
- Prototype iterations: fast, parallel development of multiple versions
- Validation & testing: technical validation using the Quad Skin Lab and customer-specific testing
- Clinical studies: demonstrating clinical effectiveness
- Regulatory approval: running in parallel with clinical work; Quad supports customers through documentation and compliance requirements
- Production ramp-up (PQ1, PQ2, PQ3) leading to steady-state volume production, scaling from a few thousand in year one to potentially millions of pieces
The four differentiators map directly to the journey: innovation, expertise, and speed are most critical in the early phases; scalability becomes the defining factor as the product moves toward volume.
Conclusion
The market for smart patches is booming. Printed electronics is the key enabling technology for this market. And the four differentiators (innovation, expertise, speed, and scalability) are what determine success in smart patch development.
Want to know how Quad can support your wearable product from concept to high-volume manufacturing?
