Call me lame but tattoos just never appealed to me. But if I were a patient I might be very happy to have one – at least a stretchable elastic one – in place of a medical device to monitor my vital signs, both externally and internally.
According to a recent story, scientists at a Cambridge, Mass. start-up, MC10, are working on stretchable electronics that can be applied to a person's skin to record blood pressure, heart rate, how well you are hydrated, and other signs of how the body is working.
The tattoos include polymer substrate, microchips, LEDs, wireless technology, and even solar cells, replacing the limitation that electronic-embedded polymer was only able to bend, but not stretch. The skin tattoos can be stretched “more than a few percent while (still) retaining function,” the report revealed.
To make the hydration-sensing patch, gold electrodes and wires just a few hundred nanometers thick are placed on silicon wafers, then peeled off and applied to stretchable polymers.
MC10 and Reebok are partnering this fall on a skin patch product that will wirelessly transmit medical information such as heart rate, respiration, hydration, temperature, and more from the patient to a nearby smartphone. Stretchable balloon catheters are also being developed to detect cardiac tissue that could potentially result in stroke or heart attack.
Yet another research team, this one from the Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering, created a design that enables the development of highly stretchable electronics for medical applications. Some devices need to be able to stretch and bend like an elastic band and this team’s design allows a device to do that to over 200 percent of its original size, four times higher than current technology.
Some refer to these tattoos as wearing a circuit board on your skin.
Edited by
Brooke Neuman
