New self-powered electric bandages could speed up wound healing

Researchers have previously created glue and gels that can heal wounds better and quicker than normal bandages. This time, scientists have created a new self-powered e-bandage to speed up the healing process for patients.

Team of scientists from China and the US have recently developed new kind of easy to wear electric bandages that are self-powered and will speed up the healing process.

The dressings include small electrodes powered by wearable nanogenerators that are wrapped around the patient’s torso. When the patient breathes, the movement of the ribcage activates the nanogenerators, which converts the skin movements into low-intensity pulses and sends them to the wound area, explained Engadget.

Scientists create new self-healing wound dressing material

Scientists explained that the pulses increase the feasibility of fibroblasts – type of skin cell – and encourages them to line up, which is key to the healing process. Also, the pulses produce additional biochemical materials that contribute to the tissue growth.

As per the results published in ACS Nano, the e-bandages were tested on rodents’ wounds that took around two weeks to heal the normal way, where took only three days to heal with the e-bandage. However, before testing on humans, scientists still want to test the bandages on pigs.