(July 3, 2012) For people
with heart conditions and other ailments that require monitoring, life can be
complicated by constant hospital visits and time-consuming tests. But what if
much of the testing done at hospitals could be conducted in the patient’s home,
office, or car?
Scientists
foresee a time when medical monitoring devices are integrated seamlessly into
the human body, able to track a patient’s vital signs and transmit them to his
doctors. But one major obstacle continues to hinder technologies like these:
electronics are too rigid.
Researchers
at the McCormick School of Engineering, working with a team of scientists from
the United States and abroad, have recently developed a design that allows
electronics to bend and stretch to more than 200 percent their original size,
four times greater than is possible with today’s technology. The key is a
combination of a porous polymer and liquid metal.