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News in brief

A team of engineers from Stanford University (CA, USA) has published work detailing the design and early testing of a flexible, wearable material that may have wide variety of medical applications. The team has detailed its work developing the flexible pressure sensor in a paper published in Nature Communications. The sensor is made up of a thin rubber layer that is marked with tiny pyramid-shaped bumps that measure only a few microns across. When pressure is applied to the device, the bumps deform and the size of the space between the two halves of the device changes. This change results in a measurable change in the electro magnetic field and the current flow in the device. Following their early testing, the Stanford team is optimistic that their design will be able to have a wide variety of indications. One potential application of this technology is in the development of flexible, wearable biological sensors. Presently the team has been able to apply to technology to produce a sensor that is able to track a person’s pulse. When the sensing material is applied to a person’s wrist, it is able to use the tiny changes in pressure on the device’s surface to measure the two distinctive peaks of their pulse as it reverberates through the body; the relative size of these two peaks can be used to provide information on the health of a patient’s heart. Discussing the use of this information in diagnosing cardiac problems, Gregor Schwartz, from the department of chemical engineering at Stanford, said, “You can use the ratio of the two peaks to determine the stiffness of the artery; for example... If there is a change in the heart’s condition, the wave pattern will change. Fortunately, when I tested this on myself, my heart looked fine.” The researchers also found that the device is so sensitive that it is able to detect changes beyond the normal two waves of the pulse. When examining the wave signal produced by the device, the researchers noticed small bump-like fluctuations in the tail of the pulse. The team hypothesizes that these changes in the tail of the signal could be used in the future to provide doctors with diagnostic cardiac information beyond the pulse. One possibility is that, following specific calibration to a patient, the device would allow for the measurement of a patient’s blood pressure. An external blood pressure monitor like this would provide a variety of benefits to patients, particularly infants, who are especially at risk of infections as a result of conventional more invasive blood pressure monitors using intravascular catheters. The team is also aiming to make the device completely wireless, with a device that can communicate with a patient’s doctor wirelessly providing the ability for doctors to access minute-by-minute information on their patient. In a further possibility, the team hopes that the technology’s ability to detect pressure highly accurately and its thin flexible characteristics would allow it to act as a form of electronic skin for prosthetics, offering a potential avenue in the development of touch sensation in prostheses.