Smart bandage

Smart textiles and patches are the near future of home health monitoring. The latest in this burgeoning field of medical therapies is one that impressively keeps an eye on your muscles in real time, helping with both injury recovery and prevention.

It's ironic that in order to see how a wound is healing, the dressing has to be removed, potentially setting back the healing process. A clever new bandage, however, continuously shows how the wound is faring – without needing a power source.

If left untreated, chronic wounds such as diabetic skin ulcers can become infected, ultimately leading to amputations or even death. A new "smart" bandage is designed to help keep that from happening, by both watching and treating such injuries.

The days of ripping off a Band-Aid could soon be in the past, with scientists creating a new affordable, flexible electronic covering that not only speeds and wirelessly monitors healing but is harmlessly absorbed into the body when its job is done.

Controlling bleeding is one of the most important life-saving measures battlefield medics can take. However, this can be a significant challenge outside of a medical facility. A new injectable heat-activated hydrogel may offer a way forward.

Chronic wounds such as diabetic skin ulcers can be very slow to heal, potentially leading to amputations or sometimes even death. A new bandage could speed their healing by delivering electrical stimulation, but only as needed.

For some time now, it's been known that the application of electricity can help heal wounds. The experimental new ePatch bandage takes that approach, plus it boosts the healing process by killing bacteria.

While antibiotics are very effective at treating infected wounds, they should definitely be used sparingly. An experimental new bandage was designed with this fact in mind, as it only dispenses medication when it detects the heat of an infection.

When removing the dressing to check on a chronic wound, you ironically often set back the healing process. A new type of "smart bandage" was designed with this problem in mind, as it transmits wound data to an app on a clinician's mobile device.

Bandaged wounds need to be checked for infection, yet removing the bandage to check the wound can delay its healing. Australian scientists may have a fix for this paradox, in the form of a dressing that glows if the wound is infected.

During surgery or traumatic injury, quickly stopping bleeding saves lives. Now, scientists have recruited an unlikely ally to that cause – snake venom, which forms the basis of a new “super glue” that halts bleeding in seconds after light activation.

While it's important to check wounds for infections, removing the dressing in order to do so can be disruptive to the healing process. A new smart bandage could help, by "glowing" in a certain way if an infection is beginning.