Chronic wounds are a common problem: in Finland, for example, almost one per cent of the inhabitants, and up to 10% of patients requiring inpatient care, suffer from them.

Diabetes is one of the reasons for the increase in the number of chronic wounds. It has been estimated that the global number of patients diagnosed with diabetes will reach 366 million by 2030.

‘In many cases, bedsores heal very slowly. In the worst case scenario, a badly infected wound can result in the amputation of an entire limb’, says researcher Anja Ranta.

The micro-current wound-treatment patch being developed offers a solution for problematic cases where traditional treatment is not effective.

‘The idea is to support and accelerate the natural healing mechanism of wounds’, Ranta explains.

The healing of a wound can be supported by stimulating the wound with electricity. The patch also accelerates the healing of non-chronic wounds: according to a previous study, an ordinary wound healed up to 2.5 times faster with electrical stimulation compared to the use of traditional wound dressings.

Compared to products already on the market, the greatest advantage of the new patch being developed by researchers is that the electric current affecting the wound can be controlled. The electric current is restricted to a safe level that is clearly below the level that the patient could feel.

In addition to the patch, the researchers will design a measuring instrument which will make monitoring the healing process possible without removing the patch. In this way, the surface of the wound will not need to be disturbed mid-healing.

‘The visual monitoring of the healing of a wound is difficult because changes can be so small that they are invisible to the naked eye. A patient may also be treated by several nurses at a hospital so the assessment of the appearance of a wound may be performed by different people’, describes researcher Sami Kielosto.

An interdisciplinary research project

The participants of the MC Patch project (MC stands for micro current) include Åbo Akademi University, Aalto University and Tampere University of Technology. The project partners combine expertise from the fields of materials and electrode technology, biomedical technology and printed intelligence. The project will receive its funding from the TUTLI programme by Tekes. The goal is to establish a new business in order to commercialise the micro-current patch.

The Aalto University researchers from the Department of Automation and Systems Technology will mainly focus on developing the measuring instrument for monitoring the healing of wounds. They will also participate in assembling the patch prototypes and designing the electrical engineering-related issues of the patch structure.

Source: Aalto University