Not long back, we spoke to you about the smart fabric that is capable of charging your devices using solar energy. Moving a step ahead, we now bring you the next breakthrough in this series, a smart thread that is capable of acting as sutures to give feedback on patients recovering from diseases. The development has taken place at the Tufts University School Of Engineering. The research team working on this project claims that the thread can communicate information back related to a number of biological factors like temperature, strain, stress, as well as pressure. It can also keep a check on pH and glucose levels determining how much time will a wound need to heal completely and if a new infection is surfacing or of the chemistry of human body is stable or not.

To accomplish this task, the research team used several kinds of conductive threads that were soaked in chemical and physical sensing compounds. These were also connected with a wireless circuit that allowed information to transmit to some smartphone placed close to them. Sameer Sonkusale, the director of Nano Lab in the computer and electrical engineering department at the Tufts likes to add, “The ability to suture a thread-based diagnostic device intimately in a tissue or organ environment in three dimensions adds a unique feature that is not available with other flexible diagnostic platforms. We think thread-based devices could potentially be used as smart sutures for surgical implants, smart bandages to monitor wound healing, or integrated with textile or fabric as personalized health monitors and point-of-care diagnostics.”
The wearable technology has been in play for a long long time where it has helped the doctors and researchers in monitoring the internal conditions of the wearer right from oximetry to heart beat. There are a few developers who took a step ahead by implanting the sensor in the patient’s body. The team working on this project noted that the present day technologies are mostly based on 2-D surfaces which restrict their utilization capacity. The smart thread takes an edge in being capable of getting in shape and bending a little more paving way for a wider usage.
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