Researchers at RWTH Aachen University are developing a washable smart jacket with integrated textile sensors for monitoring rehabilitation exercises, targeting a healthcare application in which wearable technology could have a clearly defined role. Smartwatches, fitness trackers and experimental sensor garments have made personal health monitoring increasingly familiar, but maintaining engagement with such devices over long periods has proved challenging. Rehabilitation potentially presents a different proposition, with monitoring required for a specific purpose and usually for a limited period. Developed as part of the PhysioTaix research project by ITA – the institute for technical textiles at Aaachen – the jacket is designed to monitor patients carrying out prescribed exercises, including those performed at home between appointments with physiotherapists. Sensors are integrated directly into the garment, avoiding the need to attach multiple individual sensors to different parts of the body. The jacket tracks movement in real time and transmits the resulting data to an app, where artificial intelligence is used to analyse how exercises are being performed. Patients can receive immediate feedback to help determine whether they are carrying out movements correctly, while therapists can use the recorded data as additional objective information when assessing rehabilitation progress. This addresses a practical limitation of physiotherapy. Recovery frequently depends on patients repeating exercises regularly between appointments, when a therapist is not present to observe their movements or correct mistakes. The PhysioTaix approach is therefore less about continuous health monitoring than using wearable sensing for a defined task. By incorporating the sensors into a jacket that can simply be put on, ITA is also seeking to make the technology easier to use than systems requiring several separate body-mounted sensors. Importantly for any practical healthcare application, the garment is being designed to be washable and reusable. Development is being carried out with rehabilitation centres, healthcare professionals and other specialists, while the jacket and accompanying application are being further tested at the modular smart textiles workshop at the Digital Innovation Centre Europe (DICE), in Aachen. The project will continue until February 2027, after which potential applications are expected to be assessed further with clinics and health insurance providers.This next stage could prove crucial. Smart garments capable of collecting physiological and movement data have been demonstrated for many years, but technical capability alone has not translated into widespread healthcare adoption. PhysioTaix will ultimately have to demonstrate not simply that its jacket can measure movement, but that making those measurements easier to collect provides sufficient benefit to patients, therapists and healthcare providers to justify its use.