A research team led by Professor Lim Chwee Teck from the National University of Singapore’s (NUS) Department of Biomedical Engineering and Institute for Health Innovation & Technology (iHealthtech), in collaboration with clinical partners from Singapore General Hospital, has developed a smart wearable sensor that can conduct a real-time, point-of-care assessment of chronic wounds wirelessly via an app.
A world’s first, the novel sensor technology can detect temperature, pH, bacteria type, and inflammatory factors specific to chronic wounds within 15 minutes, hence enabling fast and accurate wound assessment. The research was published in the journal Science Advances "A flexible multiplexed immunosensor for point-of-care in situ wound monitoring".
With a rapidly aging population, healthcare providers are seeing more patients suffering from non-healing wounds such as diabetic foot and chronic venous leg ulcers. It has been estimated that about two percent of the world’s population suffers from chronic wounds. The healing processes for these chronic wounds are often interrupted due to reasons such as infection and repeated trauma, leading to severe stress, pain, and discomfort to afflicted patients. For patients with diabetic foot ulcers, this can lead to more severe outcomes such as foot amputation. Timely care and proper treatment of chronic wounds are needed to speed up wound recovery. However, this requires multiple clinical visits for lengthy wound assessment and treatment, which adds to the healthcare cost. The NUS team’s innovation can help mitigate these consequences and relieve patients with chronic wounds from unnecessary distress.
Current clinical assessments of wounds rely on visual inspection, or collecting and sending wound fluid to a centralized lab to detect and analysanalyzee specific biomarkers. The whole process usually takes about one to two days and may impede proper, timely, and precise medical interventions. Although there are recent developments in flexible sensors designed for wound care, they can only probe a limited set of markers such as acidity, temperature, oxygen, uric acid, and impedance to diagnose wound inflammation. In response to these current limitations, the researchers developed VeCare, a point-of-care wound assessment platform consisting of an innovative wound-sensing bandage, an electronic chip, and a mobile app. The bandage comprises a wound contact layer, a breathable outer barrier, a microfluidic wound fluid collector, and a flexible immunosensor. VeCare is the first wound assessment platform that can detect bacteria type and probe inflammatory factors, in addition to measuring acidity and temperature, within a single 15-minute test. The immunosensing bandage enables rapid assessment of wound microenvironment, inflammation, and infection state by detecting multiple chronic wound-specific biomarkers from wound fluid using an electrochemical system. The microfluidic wound fluid collector attached to the sensor directs and boosts wound fluid delivery to the sensor by up to 180 percent. The design ensures reliable sensing performance regardless of the ulcer shape or size.
In addition, a chip integrated with flexible electronics is connected to the sensor to transmit data wirelessly to an app for convenient, real-time wound assessment and analysis onsite. The chip component, powered with a rechargeable battery, can be reused for subsequent applications.
