The work, managed by two postdoctoral associates at Harvard Medical School and colleagues led by Katia Vega at MIT’s Media Lab, paired bio-sensitive inks developed at Harvard with traditional tattoo art as a way to win some of the conditions of current biomedical monitoring devices.
“We were thinking: New technologies, what is the next age after wearables?” said Ali Yetisen, who is a Tosteson postdoctoral fellow at HMS and Massachusetts General Hospital. “And so we came up with the design that we could incorporate biosensors in the skin.”
A drawback of modern wearable monitoring devices is that they don’t seamlessly integrate with the body, Yetisen said. Short battery life is a concern and so is the lack of wireless connectivity, neither of which is an issue with the shallow, color-based interface of bio-sensitive tattoo ink.
“We wanted to go ahead what is available through wearables today,” Yetisen said.
Nan Jiang, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, said the design, “Dermal Abyss,” was directed as a proof of concept, and that further refinements — stabilizing ink so objects don’t fade or diffuse into enclosing tissue would be needed for a medical product.
The Dermal Abyss tattoo inks adjust color according to the chemistry of the body’s interstitial fluid, which can be used as a substitute for constituents of the blood. Inks developed so far change from green to brown as glucose band increases. The team also developed a green ink, viewable under blue light, that grows more powerful as sodium concentration rises, an indication of dehydration. Researchers tattooed the inks onto sections of pig skin and noted how they switched color or intensity in response to different biomarkers.
Jiang and Yetisen said that once the bugs are worked out, the attention for biologically-sensitive ink is fairly broad. Inks, Yetisen said, could be organized into long-lasting tattoos for chronic conditions or into short designs for shorter-duration monitoring. Ink can even be invisible, Yetisen said, readable under only particular kinds of light. That light could come from something as universal as a smartphone.
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