Multifunctional Materials Platform for Implantable and Wearable Photonic Healthcare Devices
Journal
Nature Reviews Materials
Date
2020.01.07
Abstract
Today, numerous light-based diagnostic and therapeutic devices are routinely used in the clinic. While these devices have a familiar look as wall-plugged in hard packages or placed at patients’ bedsides, there has recently been a rapid expansion of new ideas on a variety of functional devices that are implantable or wearable. Many related innovations are being fuelled by the development of various multifunctional materials for photonic healthcare devices. However, the finite depth of light penetration in the body is still a serious constraint to their clinical applications. In this Review, we will describe the basic concept and the current-status of representative implantable and wearable photonic healthcare devices for diagnostic and therapeutic applications. The main body of this review consists of three sections. The first main section describes recent developments in multifunctional materials critical to the advent of next-generation implantable and wearable photonic healthcare devices, and discuss how to translate these materials for further clinical applications. The second main section presents implantable photonic healthcare devices in terms of their characteristics and functions. The third main section describes exemplary cases of noninvasive wearable photonic devices across different anatomic use cases. Finally, we will discuss the future research direction of multifunctional materials, and implantable and wearable photonic devices for mobile healthcare and personalized medicine.