We are nothing without good health. It’s a cliche. It’s cheesy. And I believe it passionately.
Health is one of the most important fields in technology — and the most exciting. Why? Because of life’s frailty. Because anything that can possibly hurt us has, or will. And because life is our single most valuable possession.
Every advance is a victory, from cheap delivery systems for otherwise expensive vaccines to a complex brain implant-plus-eyeball-prosthetic that gives people with certain types of blindness newfound ability to see their loved ones in shadows, if not defined in full living color (also see my story in CNET Magazine, Summer 2015 issue).
These kinds of technological advances in medicine are important because they benefit the ailing, but they’re also thrilling for the science alone. On TV, on the Web, in the pages of my monthly Scientific American magazine, each new solution seems more amazing than the last.
Tech that heals and wows
How about the scientists at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign who are experimenting with crazy-thin, pliable electronic sheets of silicone (10 nanometers thick, about one-one hundredth the width of a cotton fiber!) that safely bend around organs inside the body, or could one day balloon inside veins, carrying smart sensors that transfer all sorts of internal data? Amazing, right? Somebody thought of doing that.
Or how about this? Researchers at MIT are working on a “living” nylon bandage that contains nanoengineered organic materials — like therapeutic drugs or essential proteins — that release over time. Smart bandages like this can help target-heal wounds and treat problem areas (sort of like this).
A different smart bandage is in the works at a nearby lab at Massachusetts General Hospital. Treated with dye, this traffic-light bandage reacts with oxygen in a visual litmus test that colors the bandage green if the wound is healing well, yellow if it’s worrisome, and red if the skin isn’t getting enough oxygen — all without disturbing the fragile, still-knitting tissue underneath.
That’s miles more advanced than the typical way healthcare professionals check on how well a wound, like a skin graft for burn victims, heals. “You know the state-of-the-art test is for wound-healing now?,” Conor Evans, one of the lead chemists of the traffic-light bandage said. “You smell it.” Compared to a red-yellow-green bandage, the sniff test sounds downright barbaric.
Elegantly ingenious ideas like these abound.
A lot of researchers are experimenting with 3D-printed organs, stuff that at least one cardiovascular researcher, Stuart Williams of the University of Louisville, calls “bioficial“
— printing cells into living tissue. (If you’ve seen Marvel’s “Age of Ultron”, you’ll get the gist. Dr. Helen Cho’s Cradle machine, which helps rebuild superheroes’ damaged tissue, is a similar idea.)
But here’s another use in the same vein: Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center are implanting specialized proteins onto a 3D-printed plastic meniscus to spur stem cells into rebuilding that knee cartilage on their own (the polymer part eventually disintegrates). Right now it’s been tested on sheep, but results are promising.
This article by Jessica Dolcourt was first published on CNET.com. To read the full story, please click here
*Featured image: Bioprinted organs, like this heart structure, could one day treat a multitude of congenital conditions. Stuart Williams