Bio-Electronic Integrated Devices for Healthcare Applications (BIOTRONICA)
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Cambridge
Department Name: Materials Science & Metallurgy
Abstract
Personalised medicine can pave the way for precision healthcare that is tailored for the individual patient, thereby improving clinical outcomes and quality-of-life, and reducing the burden on healthcare systems. This can be facilitated by remote monitoring of physiological signals in real-time via epidermal or home-use biosensors that provide actionable feedback for treatment and intervention. However, biomedical sensors that provide quantitative data mostly rely on chemical, electrochemical and optical methods of detection that are often complex and time-consuming, suffering from a lack of portability, or requiring specialist personnel and equipment.
BIOTRONICA will deliver a new class of "point-of-care" non-invasive biomedical devices that rely on electrical signals arising from biological processes, with the potential to be self-powered through energy harvested from body movement, thus enabling a step change in automated health monitoring, disease screening and patient care. Functional materials that can produce an electrical response to biological stimuli will be integrated into wearable and/or "do-it-yourself" biomedical sensors via customised nanoparticulate inks using state-of-the-art additive manufacturing methods. High-precision, rapid "printing" techniques will be used to fabricate conformable microfluidic devices and epidermal sensors for quantitative electrical analysis of body fluids, forces and sounds. The fabrication methods developed will be extended to
integrate polymer fiber-based triboelectric yarns into mechanical energy harvesters to power wearable devices.
BIOTRONICA will provide new fundamental insight into the coupling of biology and electronics for applied outcomes in healthcare. The knowledge gained on how biological signals are transduced across the body-device interface to reliably measure and regulate biological activities could in future lead to additional applications in drug screening, soft robotics, and sensor-assisted surgery.
BIOTRONICA will deliver a new class of "point-of-care" non-invasive biomedical devices that rely on electrical signals arising from biological processes, with the potential to be self-powered through energy harvested from body movement, thus enabling a step change in automated health monitoring, disease screening and patient care. Functional materials that can produce an electrical response to biological stimuli will be integrated into wearable and/or "do-it-yourself" biomedical sensors via customised nanoparticulate inks using state-of-the-art additive manufacturing methods. High-precision, rapid "printing" techniques will be used to fabricate conformable microfluidic devices and epidermal sensors for quantitative electrical analysis of body fluids, forces and sounds. The fabrication methods developed will be extended to
integrate polymer fiber-based triboelectric yarns into mechanical energy harvesters to power wearable devices.
BIOTRONICA will provide new fundamental insight into the coupling of biology and electronics for applied outcomes in healthcare. The knowledge gained on how biological signals are transduced across the body-device interface to reliably measure and regulate biological activities could in future lead to additional applications in drug screening, soft robotics, and sensor-assisted surgery.
