This week’s Wearable Tech roundup features edible batteries, 3D-printed eye cells, and a pacemaker the size of a pill.

Edible batteries

Advancements in medicine have given birth to ingestible diagnostics, tools like tiny cameras that can uncover cancer in your digestive track, or a pill that can monitor if you are adhering to your medication plan.

There are also implants to help your body functioning normally, but require a battery change every few years or so, which means the device will be surgically taken out then put back in.  These minute devices also requires a source of power to function, but their own batteries may not last that long. So researchers have found a way to deliver safe amounts of electricity to these devices that can also be ingested.

Edible batteries are made from the pigment of cuttlefish, which can discharge 10 microamperes of electricity for a period of five hours, with an ideal performance of 24 hours, as long as something ingested is likely to remain in the body.  The melanin from the cuttlefish served as the anode in the study’s aqueous sodium-ion battery, and manganese dioxide served as the cathode.  The chemical reaction between the two produces the electric charge needed to power body-residing devices.

According to the National Academy of Sciences, it is safe to consume one edible battery per day.  The hope is to eliminate the need to replace implant batteries, and create a cost-effective and non-intrusive option for patients.

3D-printed eye

Last year, people afflicted with retinitis pigmentosa were given access to Argus II, a bionic eye implant that helps them better recognize objects.  The device doesn’t really help blind people see, but for the wearer to see outlines of images better so they can properly identify them.  Argus II is a step towards providing blind people the gift of sight, but British researchers may be a step ahead with 3D printed eye cells.

The researchers have successfully 3D-printed functional eye cells with the use of the piezoelectric printer.  Adult retinal ganglion and glial cells of rats were printed with the piezoelectric printer, and the undamaged 3D printed eye cells were successfully cultured.  Glial cells play a crucial role in the regenerative approaches to blindness, as it has been determined that when glial cells are activated following an injury, they release a growth factor that rewires the connection to the optic nerve.

The next step in 3D printing eye cells will be printing rods and cones, which are responsible for the processing of light that passes through the eyes’ lenses.

Micra TPS pacemaker

Pacemakers used to require a surgical incision to the chest plus a surgical pocket to implant the device in, but with Nanostim, a device the size of an AAA battery, chest incisions are no longer needed as the device can be implanted via the femoral vein.  Nanostim has been approved for use in the US and has been acquired by St. Jude Medical, but it’s no longer a one-of-a-kind innovation.

image courtesy Medtronic

Medtronic has revealed that it has implanted a Micra TPS pacemaker to an Austrian patient.  The pacemaker is similar to the Nanostim but is 30 percent smaller and is about the size and shape of a multivitamin pill.  Just like Nanostim, the Micra TPS pacemaker is implanted in the heart’s wall via a minimally invasive procedure through the femoral vein.  Once implanted, the prongs on the Micra TPS attach to the wall of the heart to deliver electrical impulses to correct irregular heartbeats.

The Micra TPS is equipped with a 10-year battery and Medtronic will be testing the pacemaker in 780 patients, and expects results by the second half of the year.

photo credit: richard ling via photopin cc

photo credit: Lucee. via photopin cc