New smart bandage to optimise wound management

Many factors can affect chronic wound healing, such as temperature, glucose levels and acidity. However, moisture level is one of the most important – if the wound is too dry the tissue can become desiccated; too wet and it can become white and wrinkled. Both situations can disrupt healing.

Presented in Frontiers in Physics, the team’s technology utilises a sensor that can measure wound moisture levels and wirelessly transmit the data to a nearby smartphone without requiring doctors to remove the bandage to assess wound healing.

The researchers believe that in future, changing the geometry and materials in the bandage could allow for fine tuning to suit different types of wounds, resulting in easier and more successful wound monitoring.

According to the team, choice of materials was a challenge as bandages need to be biocompatible, disposable and inexpensive.

Smart bandage designed to detect infection

To achieve this, researchers said they applied a conductive polymer called poly(3,4- ethylenedioxythiophene) polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT:PSS) onto a gauze using a screen printing technique. They then incorporated the gauze with commercially available bandage materials.