ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the idea of using the energy generated by the human body to drive ultralow-power electronics to develop new portable biodevices. In that way, it would be possible to envisage new autonomous smart healthcare portable instruments that are able to easily adapt to the daily human activity. The importance of harvesting energy from the normal human activities introduces the enormous advantage of reducing the bulky batteries from the small handheld devices, allowing the miniaturisation and weight reduction of the portable instruments. The technological evolution is defining a new scenario in which it is possible to monitor patients anywhere and at any, which is of increasing interest. The placement of a central control node that acts as a master node, with other slave nodes located on or inside the body, monitoring different vital signals, defines a typical wireless body sensor networks (WBSN). The concept of WBSN is described by focuses on the most interesting measuring points for health-care applications.
