Smart Bandages: No Longer Science Fiction

By Trishanya Raju

Have you ever wished that your life could be like a movie? Well, I’m not sure how many of you have been keeping tabs on improvements in the tech world, but that dream is one step closer to being the real deal. Introducing: Smart Bandages.
 
The problem with how major wounds were bandaged is that these bandages had to be removed often to check the status of healing. While neglecting to monitor the wounds allows for infections to go untreated, constantly exposing it by removing the bandages could also expose the wound to infection or disrupt the healing process.

But now these Smart Bandages are popping up all over the world. Some researchers in Germany and South Korea have developed these liquid bandages that are supposedly able to track the oxygen concentrations in the skin in wounds and burns.

Others in Taiwan are developing Bioscope, which is a system that wirelessly transmits a patient’s heart rate, movement, and bodily noises to a computer. The incredible thing about the Bioscope system is that it is said to include a contact thermometer that gauges temperature, an accelerometer that monitors physical movement and a contact microphone that picks up on sound patterns from internal organs.

The University of Rochester is developing bandages that change color to specify that there is an infection present, and even shows where exactly the infection is emerging. They’ve done this with the help of a thin sensor made of crystalline silicon, and layers of porous silicon that has been treated with a liquid that contains probe molecules engineered to bind to fat molecules found on the surface of specific bacteria.

The idea behind these bandages could be applied to poison detection or as warnings for possible acts of biological warfare. These bandages will open up so many avenues into safety, detection, and protection that I think they might actually have a significant effect on death tolls on a global level.