SMART Healthcare: Self-healing Materials for Advanced Repairable Technologies in Healthcare

Self-healing materials are of great advantage in everyday life as they allow for reduced repair costs, more economical use of resources, and increased product lifetimes. In the medical sector, they could allow users who are highly reliant on their devices to live without the inconvenience and discomfort of having to repair or replace these. Biology has evolved highly developed mechanisms for self-healing, e.g. to close a wound, however current man-made materials do not compare. This project aims to use recent advances in synthetic biology to combine biological mechanisms with man-made materials. This will create medical devices such as physiological sensors and prostheses that are self-healing, leading to a higher quality of life for the user.