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‘SMART’ bandage will monitor, treat wounds in real time
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A novel therapeutic tool, the Sensing, Monitoring and Release of Therapeutics bandage system, developed by University of Texas at Arlington researchers, will allow health care providers to better monitor and heal complex wounds more quickly, according to a press release.
“The [Sensing, Monitoring and Release of Therapeutics (SMART)] bandage will be a flexible, portable tool that a doctor can place over a patient’s wound. Besides giving the patients medicine in real time, the tool also will be noninvasive to the patient. It can eliminate bulky devices that are used now. We hope the SMART Bandage will ease patients’ pain and help their healing,” Weidong Zhou, PhD, professor of electrical engineering, University of Texas at Arlington, said in a press release.
The SMART bandage system will be created by an interdisciplinary and medical team, including members specializing in bioengineering, nanotechnology, chemistry and vascular surgery, from the University of Texas at Arlington.
The research funding on the novel system comes from a $100,000 grant from the Texas Medical Research Collaborative, according to the release.
“This device will give doctors hard data concerning the wound. We believe it will take much of the guess work out of the equation. Doctors can direct therapy and patient care based on data,” Liping Tang, PhD, professor of bioengineering, University of Texas at Arlington, said in the release.
In addition to medical advancement, the team hopes the SMART Bandage will provide health care cost savings.
“[The SMART system] could lead to devising wearable health-monitoring devices that are less costly and more accurate than current systems. The applications for such a technology are quite numerous,” Khosrow Behbehani, PhD, dean of the College of Engineering, University of Texas at Arlington, said in the release.