SmartHeal

What it does

28% of outpatients over 70 with chronic wounds die due to complications associated with them. Assessment of wound healing stage and detection of inflammation is crucial to determine best treatment. SmartHeal is an affordable solution that can help save lives.

Your inspiration

Current methods of wound assessment rely on subjective scoring of color, smell, temperature or expensive laboratory biochemical tests. Inappropriate wound healing not only could lead to tissue inflammation, but also necrosis and even patients’ death. Moreover, the most common mistake in wound healing is changing the dressing too often, which can lead to infections, tissue disruption and extension of the healing process. That’s why we’ve started looking for a quick, affordable and easy solution of wound diagnosis that would save thousands of lifes - and the SmartHeal was born.

How it works

SmartHeal is a precise, affordable and scalable smart pH sensor integrated with wound dressing. By monitoring the pH values we can assess the wound condition and detect infection without removing the dressing and thus without the tissue disruption. By using RFID communications, the sensor on dressing itself does not require power supply or batteries for day-to-day use. The medical personnel or the patients themselves, can read the current state of pH values by passing a mobile device over the sensor. Collected data is further analyzed and can be used to prescribe an effective, directed drug treatment, resulting in quicker recovery and lower risk of complications. Moreover, Smart Heal sensor allows for a quick, easy and comfortable wound analysis. Key to our solution is our novel technology of manufacturing the dressing with integrated sensor which involve scalable and easy to implement screen printing technology combined with thermal transfer.

Design process

Our group consists of experts in electronics, nanotechnology and biomedical engineering. In May 2022 we met at the MedTech-Athon hosted by Center for Advanced Materials and Technologies CEZAMAT and Warsaw University of Technology, where in less than 48 hours we developed the SmartHeal idea and technology. Since then, we have been working very hard and managed to develop our first prototype, which is in the proof of concept stage.

How it is different

Alternatives to our solution are laboratories that provide expensive, time-consuming, multi-stage tests which simply are not being performed and because of that the mortality of chronic wound patients is increased. We offer instant results, a non-invasive product that leads to faster and more comfortable healing processes and can reduce the wound healing time and prevent amputations and death of thousands of patients in the US alone. Moreover, our manufacturing technology allows for very high volume and scalable production making our product affordable for everyone. How affordable? By combining our novel electronic materials with affordable textile industry manufacturing methods, we can offer the cost of a 0,5 PLN per sensor.

Future plans

Prize from this contest would constitute our pre-pre-seed funding. Thanks to this we will extend our research, and later on, we will obtain bridge alfa pre-seed funding to refine prototype, obtain a patent, and proof of concept along with biocompatibility testing and animal trials. After that, we will go for a series A funding that will allow us clinical trials, certification and beginning of the production. Our group consists of experts in electronics, nanotechnology and biomedical engineering - which gives us an extensive knowledge background to develop SmartHeal Technology and save the world! - which is our plan, by the way ;)

Awards

In May 2022 we developed the idea during the MedTech-Athon hosted by Center for Advanced Materials and Technologies CEZAMAT and Warsaw University of Technology, and since then we have managed to develop our first prototype, so this is our first contest in which we will take part in!