A team of researchers from the Binghamton University, State University of New York, has created a brand new sort of electronics that will enable real-time and long-term monitoring of patients’ wounds. These flexible electronics have been inspired by human skin and will prove to be a breakthrough in medical sciences.
Matthew Brown, a PhD student at Binghamton University, said, ‘We eventually hope that these sensors and engineering accomplishments can help advance healthcare applications and provide a better quantitative understanding in disease progression, wound care, general health, fitness monitoring and more.’
The biosensor can monitor lactate and oxygen levels on the skin. Biosensors are devices that merge a biological component with a. physiochemical detector for the sake of observing and detecting changes in the patient’s body. ‘Biosensors’ is a field that is rapidly growing but its growth is hampered by limitations in terms of what it can achieve.
Brown further said, ‘We are focused on developing next-generation platforms that can integrate with biological tissue (e.g., skin, neural and cardiac tissue).’ Under the guidance of Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering Ahyeon Koh, Brown, master’s students Youjoong Park and Brandon Ashley, and undergraduate student Sally Kuan have developed a sensor that is structurally similar to the skin’s microarchitecture.
The electromechanical sensor is an open-mesh that features gold sensor cables. These help it achieve the mechanics that are similar to the skin elasticity. The scientists are of the point of view that the sensor would act as an unobtrusive element to its wearer. The thing is that the more a sensor is able to meld seamlessly with the patient, the more improved is the quality of data that is collected by the sensor.
Brown said, ‘This topic was interesting to us because we were very interested in the real-time, on-site evaluation of wound healing progress in the near future. Both lactate and oxygen are critical biomarkers to access wound-healing progression.’
Koh said, ‘The bio-mimicry structured sensor platform allows free mass transfer between biological tissue and bio-interfaced electronics. Therefore, this intimately bio-integrated sensing system is capable of determining critical biochemical events while being invisible to the biological system or not evoking an inflammatory response.’