A new high tech tattoo may soon be your saving grace the next time you fall ill. Woven
of gold and silk, this temporary skin embossing could detect things
like bacterial infections and let others know you’re sick.
This
is the brainchild of Princeton professor Michael McAlpine, who recently
received a grant through his university to expedite his research and
make antenna tattoos a reality.
The engineering professor says he got the idea while reading about a woman who suddenly had an asthma attack at a grocery store.
‘She
couldn’t breathe enough to tell first-responders what was wrong, but
she had a tattoo on her arm that said she had asthma,’ McAlpine told
Times of Trenton. ‘I thought, if she can have a passive tattoo that says
“I have asthma,” why not have an active tattoo that can continuously
track your health?’
McAlpine’s hope is that, now that he has grant funding, he will soon be testing his invention in hospitals.
He also hopes to lengthen the time the tattoo’s antenna, which can wash off with water, will stay on the body.
And this isn’t the first time McAlpine has thought up novel ways to detect disease in the body.
Last year, he and his team of researchers reported they’d found a way to test’s one’s breath for evidence of disease.
By
placing a super thin form of carbon called graphene along with disease
sensing peptides on a strip and ‘tattooing’ it onto teeth, they were
able to detect infection and transit the data it to medical personnel.
It
seems that McAlpine and his team have now taken their ‘tooth tattoo’ a
step further and are exploring new and more innovative ways to put their
research to use.
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