News & Events: Smart pressure ulcer detection

Academic hospitals have all the makings for rich medical device development. They have physicians to identify surgical needs, researchers to test theories, bioengineers to design and create devices and patients to participate in clinical trials. However, the disconnect between engineering and surgical departments makes innovation a challenge. So does surgeons' all-consuming job Number One—treating patients. Providing the Infrastructure for Surgeons to Innovate Surgical Innovations, part of the University of California, San Francisco's Department of Surgery and Bioengineering & [...]

Innovative research by Professor David M. Young, MD is featured in a special report in The Chronicle of Higher Education examining the extent to which universities can actually transform their discoveries into tangible solutions benefiting society at large. The Chronicle report highlights a UCSF Department of Surgery effort led by Dr. Young, in collaboration with UC Berkeley engineers, to develop an electronic "smart bandage" that will prevent bedsores and warn of dangerous infections. The report highlights the growing efforts by universities to translate discoveries into marketable [...]

UC Berkeley News reports on the "smart bandage," a device in development by a team of surgeons and scientists at UCSF and UC Berkeley that uses electrical currents to detect early tissue damage from pressure ulcers, or bedsores, well before they are visible to the human eye. The technology offers the possibility of early intervention to prevent progression of the wound. David M. Young, MD, Professor in the Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, is leading the clinical development of the technology.  Engineers at UC Berkeley are developing a new type of bandage that does far more [...]