{"id":4505,"date":"2019-12-23T10:22:32","date_gmt":"2019-12-23T02:22:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cde.nus.edu.sg\/ece\/?post_type=nus-news&p=4505"},"modified":"2024-07-31T16:20:18","modified_gmt":"2024-07-31T08:20:18","slug":"microsensor-implants-for-24-7-health-monitoring","status":"publish","type":"nus-news","link":"https:\/\/cde.nus.edu.sg\/ece\/news\/microsensor-implants-for-24-7-health-monitoring\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsensor Implants for 24\/7 Health Monitoring"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tiny subcutaneous implants that can continuously measure a person\u2019s blood glucose, heart rate and other physiological conditions are a Holy Grail of modern medicine. A team of NUS researchers has recently made a quantum leap into turning this dream closer to reality. They developed a new wireless reader that is so sensitive to minute changes in a sensor\u2019s readings that it enables the creation of sub-millimetre microsensors, tiny enough to be injected under the skin.<\/p>\n

\"Microsensor
The highly sensitive wireless technology developed by NUS researchers can monitor health indicators such as blood pressure using microsensors that are tiny enough to be injected under the skin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Current efforts to make these microsensors small have been largely hampered by technology limitations. These sensors are too small to be powered by a battery, so they require a sensor reader to be placed near them to constantly detect signals such as chemical or pressure changes using magnetic fields. For a reader to make sense of the signals, the sensor must be large enough to create a strong signal in the reader. So far, researchers have not been able to create viable microsensors below 1 millimetre.<\/p>\n

The team from NUS Electrical and Computer Engineering<\/a> and the NUS Institute for Health Innovation and Technology<\/a>, led by Assistant Professor John Ho, developed a new way of measuring the signal by calibrating the wireless reader to work at an exceptional point. This is a special state where the reader becomes extremely sensitive to nearby objects. The result is that the new reader is so sensitive \u2014 three times more sensitive than existing readers \u2014 that it can even read the tiny signals emitted by the sub-millimetre microsensors.<\/p>\n

The team developed a working prototype of the reader that can read a microsensor that is 0.9 millimetres in diameter while implanted underneath the skin using a syringe. In lab experiments, the reader was able to monitor the rate of breathing and heart rate by detecting subtle movements of the battery-free microsensor.<\/p>\n

\"John
The advanced wireless technology developed by Asst Prof John Ho (left) and doctoral student Dong Zhenya (right) can sense implantable microsensors. One of the microsensors is shown on the finger of Mr Dong.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It took two years of research by the team, from February 2017 to January 2019, to develop this innovative microsensor. The team\u2019s achievement was published in August 2019 in the scientific journal Nature Electronics<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe hope that our breakthrough will be a trailblazer for the future of minimally invasive health monitoring solutions where patients are immediately alerted whenever their physiological conditions such as heart rate and blood glucose cross a critical threshold,\u201d said Asst Prof Ho.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow that we have proven the viability of our reader, the next step is to develop a suite of passive (battery-free) microsensors that can monitor various physiological parameters such as glucose, bioelectrical activity and blood chemistry,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tiny subcutaneous implants that can continuously measure a person\u2019s blood glucose, heart rate and other physiological conditions are a Holy Grail of modern medicine. A team of NUS researchers has recently made a quantum leap into turning this dream closer to reality. They developed a new wireless reader that is so sensitive to minute changes<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":4507,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"news_category":[37,48,49],"class_list":["post-4505","nus-news","type-nus-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news_category-ece","news_category-ece-in-the-news","news_category-research-impact"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cde.nus.edu.sg\/ece\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/4505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cde.nus.edu.sg\/ece\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cde.nus.edu.sg\/ece\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/nus-news"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cde.nus.edu.sg\/ece\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cde.nus.edu.sg\/ece\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/4505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15052,"href":"https:\/\/cde.nus.edu.sg\/ece\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/4505\/revisions\/15052"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cde.nus.edu.sg\/ece\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cde.nus.edu.sg\/ece\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cde.nus.edu.sg\/ece\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news_category?post=4505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}