Aman Bhatia

Advances in chronic wearable biosignal acquisition are reviewed, emphasizing biointerfaces, wireless power, multimodal sensing, analytics, and challenges in epidermal turnover, accuracy, power and clinical translation.

Metal nanoparticle (NP)‐catalyzed electron transfer (ET) from a reducing agent to a metal complex is useful for signal amplification in biosensors. For efficient ET, the metal complex must undergo rapid outer‐sphere reactions, be highly water‐soluble, and effectively penetrate bio/organic layers on metal NPs. Our study identifies Ru(NH₃)₆³⁺ as well‐suited for this purpose. Among reducing agents, ammonia‐borane (AB) enables rapid metal NP‐catalyzed ET, with Au, Pt, and Pd NPs displaying similar catalytic activities. The pseudo second‐order rate constant for 20‐nm Au NP‐catalyzed ET from AB to Ru(NH₃)₆³⁺ (1.4 × 10⁸ M⁻¹ s⁻¹) approaches the diffusion‐controlled rate constant. Despite immunoglobulin G and bovine serum albumin passively adsorbed on Au NPs, catalytic activity remains largely unaffected. Applying Au NP‐catalyzed ET to prostate‐specific antigen detection in human serum achieves a low detection limit of 10 pg/mL. These findings highlight the potential of Ru(NH₃)₆³⁺ and AB in designing biosensors based on rapid catalytic reaction.

Advances in soft materials, miniaturized electronics, sensors, stimulators, radios, and battery-free power supplies are resulting in a new generation of fully implantable organ interfaces that leverage volumetric reduction and soft mechanics by eliminating electrochemical power storage. This device class offers the ability to provide high-fidelity readouts of physiological processes, enables stimulation, and allows control over organs to realize new therapeutic and diagnostic paradigms. Driven by seamless integration with connected infrastructure, these devices enable personalized digital medicine. Key to advances are carefully designed material, electrophysical, electrochemical, and electromagnetic systems that form implantables with mechanical properties closely matched to the target organ to deliver functionality that supports high-fidelity sensors and stimulators. The elimination of electrochemical power supplies enables control over device operation, anywhere from acute, to lifetimes matching the target subject with physical dimensions that supports imperceptible operation. This review provides a comprehensive overview of the basic building blocks of battery-free organ interfaces and related topics such as implantation, delivery, sterilization, and user acceptance. State of the art examples categorized by organ system and an outlook of interconnection and advanced strategies for computation leveraging the consistent power influx to elevate functionality of this device class over current battery-powered strategies is highlighted.

Remote patient monitoring is a critical component of digital medicine, and the COVID-19 pandemic has further highlighted its importance. Wearable sensors aimed at noninvasive extraction and transmission of high-fidelity physiological data provide an avenue toward at-home diagnostics and therapeutics; however, the infrastructure requirements for such devices limit their use to areas with well-established connectivity. This accentuates the socioeconomic and geopolitical gap in digital health technology and points toward a need to provide access in areas that have limited resources. Low-power wide area network (LPWAN) protocols, such as LoRa, may provide an avenue toward connectivity in these settings; however, there has been limited work on realizing wearable devices with this functionality because of power and electromagnetic constraints. In this work, we introduce wearables with electromagnetic, electronic, and mechanical features provided by a biosymbiotic platform to realize high-fidelity biosignals transmission of 15 miles without the need for satellite infrastructure. The platform implements wireless power transfer for interaction-free recharging, enabling long-term and uninterrupted use over weeks without the need for the user to interact with the devices. This work presents demonstration of a continuously wearable device with this long-range capability that has the potential to serve resource-constrained and remote areas, providing equitable access to digital health.