Creativity comes in many forms, and sometimes, even with creating medical innovations, being frugal can be a viable option.
Muhammad Mustafa Hussain, an associate professor of electrical engineering at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Thuwal, Saudi Arabia and his team of scientists have created “smart skin” that can multitask like the real thing, and they did it with household goods, such as Post-It notes, aluminum foil and tape.
Human skin is unique in the way that it feels temperature, pressure and can detect humidity and motion. This smart skin was designed to replicate that functionality.
This office supply “skin” uses sponges to detect pressure, aluminum foil to sense motion, and sticky note paper to detect humidity. In addition to that, conductive silver ink and graphite pencils are used to also sense temperature and acidity.
Hussain heads the university’s Integrated Nanotechnology Laboratory. In the laboratory, scientists are taking things like stickers, legos and saliva to come up with novel solutions to various problems. The smart skin results were published in in the inaugural edition of the journal Advanced Materials Technologies.
Smart skin, such as the kind Hussain has developed, could be used to make prosthetics smarter, make wearable technology even more wearable and give robots a more sophisticated sense of touch. It could also be a great option for burn victims or others who have been injured.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
As Hussain told The Washington Post, “With plastic surgery we can probably help get them back to normal life and restore their confidence, but if we can make an artificial skin and eventually connect it to their neurological embodiment, that would be fantastic.”
Here’s a very brief clip that demonstrates the response of the smart skin as a person’s finger gets closer to its surface:
Photo: Screenshot via The Washington Post/ (KAUST)
