Last year I wrote about a fascinating smart fabric that had been developed to help combat skin conditions such as eczema. The Portugese team, from the Centre for Nanotechnology and Smart Materials (CENTI), combined nanotech with plant oil. The solution sees the oil pumped into tiny capsules that are programmed to release the oil only when bacteria is present that causes eczema.
Another innovative attempt to use smart fabrics have been developed by French scientists from Texinov Medical Textiles. They’ve developed a fabric that blasts the skin with light over a 2.5 hour treatment cycle.
The team believe their device will be the quickest device on the market in eradicating any unwanted skin conditions, including acne, psoriasis and eczema, all without a single side effect.
The technology covers the affected area with a photosensitizer cream, with the skin then wrapped in a light-emitting textile. The textile has optical fibres knitted into it to accelerate the reaction between the cream and oxygen.
“FLUXMEDICARE is unprecedented in the field of treating skin conditions. Since the lighting textile wraps around the unique, individual contours of a patient, the emitted light in our device is the same at every part of the body under treatment, meaning the beams are homogenous,” the team say.
Smart skin care
Previous technology in this field used Photo Dynamic Therapy (PDT), which requires the patient to stand under a lamp that blasts light from a flat pane. The treatment causes intense pain to the patient however so is not at all popular.
“Previous PDT was unsatisfactory in many ways.” the team explain, “Not only did patients report a pain ranking of at least 7/10 as well as burns and redness persisting for several days, but also, coming from a flat source, a lot of the emitted light was ‘lost’.”
The new technology has already undergone clinical trials in Lille and Germany, with patients reporting an average pain ranking of between 0 and 1 out of ten, with the same level of efficacy. What’s more, the system is designed to be easy to use for both patient and clinician.
What’s more, it’s also relatively cheap compared to the legacy tech. Whereas the lamp and protective equipment required for the old technology can cost around €15,000, whereas the new technology costs around €5,000.
“The FLUXMEDICARE device is flexible and mobile so a number of patients can be treated simultaneously. In the future in we hope to treat people in their own homes. The implied healthcare savings are substantial,” they conclude.
It’s certainly an interesting technology, and you can learn more about it via the video below.
