Image: Artist’s rendering of small robots with grapplers and searchlights that swim between red blood cells; Copyright: PantherMedia/Andreus

Topic of the Month February 2021

Autonomous medical technology: independently in the body

Therapies need to be carried out with high reliability by trained personal. This will not change in the future. But maybe we will be able to let systems in the patient’s body do some of the work. Some approaches are already aiming to make implants more independent so they will be able to flexibly react to changes. Read more in our Topic of the Month!

Autonomous medical devices: running well in your body

Image: Artist’s rendering of small star-shaped machines between red blood cells; Copyright: PantherMedia/Michael Osterrieder

In theory, autonomous medical technologies can be used in a diagnostic or therapeutic capacity inside the body under certain conditions. This may not sound like a new invention at first. After all, implantable cardioverter-defibrillators have monitored and fixed abnormal heart rhythm for many years. But by now, autonomous medical devices are being developed to support an increasing number of fields and applications.

Read the article about autonomous medical devices here

Tumor therapy: drug delivery pump instead of injection

Image: Two small, angular-shaped, electrical devices that are held with tweezers; Copyright: Fraunhofer EMFT/Bernd Müller

Drugs always have undesired side effects. Cytostatics are powerful drugs used to treat cancer. They reach almost all cells in the body, killing healthy cells as well as cancer cells in the process. A targeted delivery to the specific cellular site would be a gentler treatment. Implants are extremely valuable tools in this setting since they can automatically or with the push of a button deliver drugs.

Read the interview with Dr. Sebastian Kibler here

Intelligent implants: when the material is the key to the solution

Image: A group of researchers is discussing a chemical structural formula in front of a whiteboard; Copyright: PantherMedia/depositedhar

Today we use implants to stabilize or compensate for injuries inside the body and to aid in the healing process. Implants cannot act autonomously and treat the patient if they deem it necessary. However, it is just a matter of time before this happens because research on intelligent implant materials that respond to stimuli is on the cusp of a breakthrough.

Read the interview with Prof. Christine Selhuber-Unkel here

Video

Smart implant – Healing fractures autonomously with smart materials

Lower leg fractures put a great strain on patients due to their long healing process. In the future, an intelligent implant could control how the bone grows together again and thus optimize the healing process. In our video, you can learn from the developers at Saarland University how this works and what role artificial intelligence plays here.