Sensing, monitoring, and release of therapeutics: the translational journey of next generation bandages

This article aims to be a progress report on the Sensing, Monitoring And Release of Therapeutics (SMART) bandage—one of the three technologies that received the inaugural SPIE Photonics West Translational Research Symposium Award in 2015. Invented and developed by Dr. Conor L. Evans and his research team at the Wellman Center for Photomedicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, the SMART bandage is a tool aiming to provide measurements of physiological parameters in the skin alongside the administration of therapeutics on-demand. Since the project began in 2012, the chemists, physicists, and biomedical engineers in the team have worked closely with partners from academia and industry to develop oxygen-sensing SMART bandage prototypes that are now in first-in-human clinical studies. This report gives perspectives on the genesis and translational journey of the technology with an emphasis on the challenges encountered, and the solutions innovated at each stage of development.