AI enabled soft robotic implant monitors scar tissue to self-adapt for personalized drug treatment
Research teams at University of Galway and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have detailed a breakthrough in medical device technology that could lead to intelligent, long-lasting, tailored treatment for patients thanks to soft robotics and artificial intelligence.
The transatlantic partnership has created a smart implantable device that can administer a drug — while also sensing when it is beginning to be rejected — and use AI to change the shape of the device to maintain drug dosage and simultaneously bypass scar tissue build up.
The study was published in the journal Science Robotics.
Implantable medical device technologies offer promise to unlock advanced therapeutic interventions in healthcare, such as insulin release to treat diabetes, but a major issue holding back such devices is the patient’s reaction to a foreign body.
Dr Rachel Beatty, University of Galway, and co-lead author on the study, explained: “The technology which we have developed, by using soft robotics, advances the potential of implantable devices to be in a patient’s body for extended periods, providing long-lasting therapeutic action. Imagine a therapeutic implant that can also sense its environment and respond as needed using AI — this approach could generate revolutionary changes in implantable drug delivery for a range of chronic diseases.”
The University of Galway-MIT research team originally developed first-generation flexible devices, known as soft robotic implants, to improve drug delivery and reduce fibrosis. Despite that success, the team regard the technology as one-size-fits-all, as it did not account for how individual patients react and respond differently, or for the progressive nature of fibrosis, where scar tissue builds around the device, encapsulating it, impeding and blocking its purpose, eventually forcing it to fail.
The latest research, published today in Science Robotics, demonstrates how they have significantly advanced the technology — using AI — making it responsive to the implant environment with the potential to be longer lasting by defending against the body’s natural urge to reject a foreign body. More