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Tiny Implants Use Body Tissue to Communicate
Confirmed
In Short: Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a system that allows tiny implantable devices to communicate through the body's tissue, potentially revolutionizing medical implants.
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a system that allows tiny implantable devices to communicate through the body's tissue, potentially revolutionizing medical implants.
The system, called SWANS (Sensory and Actuator Networks in Soft Tissue), enables devices to send and receive electrical signals through the body's natural ionic conductivity.
Materials engineer Amir Alavi notes that this approach could offer a low-power way for implants to work together, with one detecting a symptom and another delivering treatment.
In a study published in Science, the team demonstrated that a wearable external hub or implant can generate an electric pulse that produces a small current in the surrounding tissue.
This current can be detected by other tiny implants, which can then respond by stimulating a nerve or releasing a drug.
Alex Abramson, the study's senior author, explains that this system allows sensors and actuators to be placed in the best locations for detection and treatment, respectively.
The low power requirements mean that these devices can be small enough to inject through a syringe and last for about a year before needing replacement.
Abramson emphasizes that traditional wireless signals like Bluetooth struggle to pass through human tissue, but this new system bypasses that limitation.
Ramy Ghanim, a Ph.D. student and first author of the study, expresses his passion for creating devices that improve patient quality of life.
The team's ultimate goal is to fully automate human health, delivering therapies exactly when and where they are needed, in a coordinated fashion across the body.
This development could lead to more personalized bioelectronic medicine, where devices can work together like never before, sensing in one part of the body and triggering a therapeutic response elsewhere.
What this adds
The system's potential could grow as other technologies improve, including wearables, AI systems, and miniature, battery-free implantable sensors.
What's confirmed
- “With our system, you can now place sensors in the best possible place to detect a biological signal and place actuators in the best possible place to perform a therapeutic action,” said Alex Abramson, the study’s senior author and an assistant professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.
What's still developing
- Radio signals also weaken as they travel through body tissue, limiting how far apart communicating devices can be.
- But getting them to talk to each other remains tricky.
- They want to stop treating the body as an obstacle to wireless communication and start using it as part of the network.
- So if, say, a sensor on your arm detects that something has changed in your body, instead of sending the information over Bluetooth, it can send a tiny electrical signal through your tissues.
- Medical implants can go a step further, sensing or treating problems from inside the body.
- Somewhere else, an implanted device receives the signal and responds, perhaps by stimulating a nerve or eventually releasing a drug.
- But human tissue isn’t particularly friendly to radio waves.
- Researchers at Georgia Tech have an idea to bypass that.
- Those signals also require large antennas and lots of power, so implants must be large to accommodate those components.