Smart Sensor Technology gives better understanding of Wound Formation and Treatment

With the NHS spending £4.5-£5.1bn on wound management, Dr Michael Crichton, a biomedical engineer at Heriot-Watt University and Dr Jenna Cash, a specialist in wound healing immunology from the University of Edinburgh, along with ESPRC- funding, have collaborated on a two year project to gain a better understanding on wound formations, and see if they can reverse the cost of treating them.
“We know very little about the mechanics of how wounds heal, so we need to understand what actually happens in a wound.” Said Dr Crichton “We currently judge the progress of a wound based on the patient report of pain and how the wound looks to the naked eye, so to get the information we need, we’re working on creating a small sensor to be embedded in a bandage to measure how a wound changes. It will make small mechanical measurements to tell us how the wounds changing without us having to interfere with the process.”
Whilst the senor is looking into how skin wounds heal, there is a possibility that their finding could be applied to other tissue s and organs within the body.