Contributing Editor, MEMS Investor Journal
The aim of a $1.6 million Office of Naval Research program is to create a microfluidic hospital on-a-chip by 2012 that can be deployed on the battlefield to monitor a soldier's injuries and administer medications. Today injured soldiers are left where they lie -- after being shot, stunned or made victims of shrapnel wounds -- until "hot zones" cool off enough for medics to reach them. But if each solider wore a hospital on-a-chip as a part of their standard-issue gear, then their condition could be assessed with microfluidic devices that harness MEMS techniques to diagnose and administer appropriate drugs to stabilize the injured soldiers’ condition until medics can reach them.
Expanded view of the design of the micro total analysis system (TAS) of microfluidic device for Navy funded hospital on-a-chip program.
The wearable MEMS devices that constantly monitor vital signs and help treat wounds are being developed by professors Joseph Wang at the University of California at San Diego in collaboration with Evgeny Katz of Clarkson University (Potsdam, N.Y.) Their professed aim it to treat soldiers during the first 30 minutes of sustaining battlefield wounds.
Flexible, wearable printed sensors fabricated at UCSD by Professor Joesph Wang for its Navy funded hospital on-a-chip program.
Hospitals on-a-chip are similar to microfluidic labs-on-a-chip in that they harness MEMS to craft micron-sized channels, using semiconductor etching techniques, to pipe drugs from internal reservoirs to administration ports. The main difference is that labs-on-a-chip are usually single-purpose devices, whereas hospitals on-a-chip will house a repertoire of different drugs, and depend on logic circuits to assess a soldier’s condition, then gate the appropriate drug that remedies the malady -- from morphine for pain to antidotes for chemical warfare agents.
The fabrication of hospitals on-a-chip is a relatively straightforward retooling of existing lab-on-chip techniques, but the sensor that assesses the injured soldiers condition has taken two years to develop. The result is printable biosensors that line the elastic waistband of a soldier’s underwear. By measuring biomarkers in a soldiers sweat-soaked waistband, the researchers hope to use the hospital on-a-chip's microfluidic channels to process enzymes, infer the proper diagnosis and administer the appropriate drug.
Copyright 2010 MEMS Investor Journal
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