New ‘smart’ bandage can monitor and treat wounds

By James Gamble via SWNS

A new space-age "smart" bandage that can monitor and treat wounds promises to make the healing process cheaper, faster and easier.

Scientists say the ingenious bandage can gather and transmit data on a patient's wound and send it to a device for review, deliver antibiotics and even apply an electric field to stimulate tissue growth.

Researchers at the California Institute of Technology - or Caltech - have engineered the clever, stretchy bandage which will revolutionize wound treatment.

Though not currently available to buy, the product could be available in the near future, allowing for further successful tests in humans.

The bandage was developed in the lab of Dr. Wei Gao, an assistant professor of medical engineering and Heritage Medical Research Institute Investigator.

Wounds such as cuts, scrapes and burns can take our bodies time to fully recover from.

However, conditions such as diabetes can often interfere with the healing process and create wounds which simply do not fade and have the potential to become infected and fester.

These kinds of persistent wounds are not only intrusive to the lives of the sufferers but can also prove draining to our healthcare systems.

In the United States alone, chronic wounds represent a financial burden of an estimated $25 billion each year.

Gao and his team set out to find a way to make it easier, faster and cheaper to deal with these chronic wounds.

The new smart bandages claim to make chronic wounds - wounds which fail to heal in a normal, timely manner - easier and less expensive to treat, as well as more effective.

They are vastly more intelligent than typical bandages, which often only consist of layers of absorbent material.

The Caltech researchers' smart bandages are made from a flexible polymer containing both electronics and medication.

The electronics in the bandage allow the sensor to monitor for molecules and conditions like pH levels or temperatures in the wound, which could indicate a bacterial infection or inflammation.

The innovative bandage can respond in one of three ways to wounds.

Firstly, it can transmit gathered data from the wound wirelessly to a nearby smartphone, computer or tablet to be reviewed either by the patient themselves or their doctor.

It can also adeptly deliver antibiotics or other internally-stored medication directly to the wound to treat inflammation and infection.

Finally, the smart bandages can apply a low-level electrical field to the wound, which can help to stimulate tissue growth in the wound and speed up the healing process.

In animal models, Gao's team says the bandages were able to provide real-time updates about wound conditions and the animals' metabolic states, as well as offer speeded healing of infected wounds similar to those in humans.

Gao lauded the promising results and, along with collaborators at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California, will focus on improving the bandages' technology and testing it on human patients.

"There are many different types of chronic wounds - especially in diabetic ulcers and burns that last a long time and cause huge issues for the patient," Gao explains.

"There is a demand for technology that can facilitate recovery.

"We have shown this proof of concept in small animal models, but, down the road, we would like to increase the stability of the device and also to test it on larger chronic wounds because the wound parameters and microenvironment may vary from site to site."

Gao's team published their paper in the latest issue of the journal Science Advances.