UC Santa Cruz leading new smart bandage project

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. (KION) A team from UC Santa Cruz is working with doctors and scientists at UC Davis and Tufts University to create what they are calling a "smart bandage" to help with hard-to-heal wounds.

The university said the bandages would be especially important for current members of the military and veterans who have blast wounds from explosions, but also people with chronic wounds such as diabetic ulcers.

Marco Rolandi with UCSC's Baskin School of Engineering said the goal of the project is to cut wound healing time in half with a system that could stimulate and monitor the wound. They are working to make a flexible bioelectric bandage that would deliver ions to control the electrochemical environment and small molecules and growth factors to help with healing.

The bandage would include an artificial intelligence system that could assess the wound and deliver stimuli to speed up the healing process by using sensors. It would also allow doctors to get remote sensing of the wound's status and give options for treatment.

"This collaboration, which brings together the work of engineers, scientists, and medical doctors to solve an important problem, is a wonderful example of the creativity that comes of interdisciplinary research," said Baskin School of Engineering dean Alexander Wolf.

Funding for the project comes from a $16 million contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.