MedTech

A super-strong, stretchy, and self-healing biomaterial that adheres to muscles and helps them heal faster after injury.

MyoExo is a diagnostic technology based on strain sensors that can accurately detect muscle rigidity in patients with Parkinson’s disease and other neurological disorders. Data obtained with the device continuously from patients could improve the monitoring of treatments, and therapeutic interventions.

ReConstruct is a platform for growing, vascularizing, and implanting patient-derived tissues that enable safer breast reconstruction after cancer surgery.

Soft, conductive hydrogels match the physical properties of the human brain, enabling the creation of electrodes and implantable devices that can improve brain-machine interfaces while reducing the risk of injury.

In collaboration with Kraft Heinz, our sugar-to-fiber product can convert sugar in food products into prebiotic fiber in the human gut, reducing the amount of sugar absorbed into the bloodstream without altering the amount of sugar in existing food product recipes.

A Band-Aid® adhesive bandage is an effective treatment for stopping external bleeding from skin wounds, but an equally viable option for internal bleeding does not yet exist. Surgical glues are often used inside the body instead of traditional wound closure techniques like stitches, staples, and clips because they reduce the patient’s time in the hospital...

Endoscopy has proven extremely useful in many areas of medicine because it can be carried out with relatively few risks in a short time, and be used to diagnose and treat numerous diseases. In gastroenterology, endoscopies of the upper gastrointestinal tract (esophagus, stomach, first part of the small intestine; upper GI endoscopies) and lower gastrointestinal...

Age-related medical conditions are responsible for most cases of blindness and visual impairment worldwide. In 2015, there were an estimated 36 million blind people in the world, with an additional 217 million suffering from moderate to severe vision impairment. Over 80% of the visually impaired were older than 50, and this percentage is expected to...

Surgeons can use up to 250 different tools during a surgical procedure to perform tasks like cutting, grasping, cauterizing, suturing, suctioning, and reducing bleeding. Each tool must be manually counted by hospital staff both before and after surgery to ensure that none of them have gone missing, which is a tedious and time-consuming process. This...

Soft robots, similar to living organisms, are made from compliant materials that allow them great flexibility and adaptability for tasks at the human-robot interface and elsewhere. To enable soft robotic missions in different industrial, exploratory, and medical settings, engineers are trying to equip them with artificial muscles that could enable them to move smoothly, efficiently...

Novel ear tubes coated with proprietary liquid-infused medical-grade polymers that form a frictionless, biofouling-resistant layer inside the tube, dramatically reducing the adhesion of biofluids, human cells, and common ear infection-causing bacterial strains by about 99% when compared with conventional tympanostomy tubes.

As robots have gotten smaller, softer, and more maneuverable, they’ve opened up myriad possibilities for interacting with objects on a tiny scale, including on and in the human body. However, human hands still have a major advantage over robots: the ability to feel. Researchers at the Wyss Institute are using the Pop-Up MEMS manufacturing technique...

Endoscopes are a standard device in gastrointestinal medicine, used by surgeons to noninvasively see and take biopsies from tissues along the entire digestive tract. However, endoscopes themselves amount to hollow tubes with a camera and light attached, through which different instruments are threaded to the procedure site, and are rigid and not very maneuverable. Two...

The majority of stroke survivors have difficulty using their affected arm in everyday life. Commercial rehabilitation robots exist, but most are expensive, rigid, non-portable exoskeletons that can only be used in clinical rehabilitation settings. Portable devices could considerably increase the frequency and amount of robotic therapy, maximizing the recovery possible for patients with arm impairments....

Focused rotary jet spinning (FRJS) is a manufacturing technique that can rapidly spin polymers into long fibers that are easily shaped into heart valves for treating a variety of cardiac diseases in children and adults.

Over 15 million Americans are at risk of anaphylaxis, a severe allergic reaction triggered by exposure to certain foods, materials, medications, and insect bites. Every three minutes, a food reaction sends someone to the emergency room. In most individuals, anaphylactic shock can be prevented by administering the counteracting drug epinephrine, as soon as an attack...

The body’s ability to stop bleeding, also known as hemostasis, is critical for survival. For patients with blood clotting disorders, medical conditions requiring the use of anticoagulation or antiplatelet drugs, or who require treatment with extracorporeal devices that circulate their blood outside of the body, it is essential that care providers can rapidly monitor their...

Recent decades have seen rapid development in the manufacture of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) at the micrometer scale, mostly based on silicon wafer processing techniques, with characteristic length scales of millimeters to nanometers. However, standard MEMS techniques are often inappropriate for producing machines with complex 3D topologies and varied constituent materials at the mesoscale, at sizes...

Organisms, such as flowers and plants, have tissue compositions and microstructures creating dynamic morphologies that can shapeshift in response to changes in their environments. Researchers at the Wyss Institute have mimicked a variety of such dynamic shape changes like those performed by tendrils, leaves, and flowers in response to changes in humidity or temperature with...

Advances in medical care have improved the survival of very low birth weight premature infants but at the same time have also led to an increased number of surviving infants with reduced cerebral growth and long-term neurodevelopmental motor, cognitive, and social morbidities. These complications are met by a lack of early assessment tools for diagnosing...