Tattoos have long been an attractive art display that lets people uniquely express themselves. People adore getting pricked for showing off what they believe in and displaying the sides of their personalities. This project takes place at a university in South Korea and started with the creation of an ink that would not harm human tissues and that could work with an electrical circuit printed on the skin. Find out more about health monitoring tattoo projects below.

A group of researchers from South Korea has developed an ink for tattoos that, in the future, could be used as sensors printed on the skin to monitor the health status of those who have them and warn of health problems.

The project takes place at the Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in Korea and the ink was developed from a liquid metal, more specifically from gallium, a metallic compound also used in semiconductors and thermometers and from carbon nanotubes that, together, work as an electrical circuit printed on the skin.

In the current state of the project, the signals recorded by the ink on the skin can be monitored with the help of a specific equipment, such as an ECG device. In the future, the goal is to eliminate the need for direct contact with the tattoo, to read the recorded information and display it on a monitor, and to be able to receive the information collected anywhere.

“In the future, what we hope to do is connect a wireless chip integrated with this ink, so that we can communicate, or send a signal between our body and an external device,” explained project leader Steve Park , professor of science. and materials engineering, to Reuters.

The ink used by the researchers has no effect on the skin. The mixture it is made of offers guarantees of durability, which only the metal could not allow. By reading the tattoo it is possible to gather information about heart rate and other vital signs, blood sugar level, among other parameters.

Color-changing Tattoos To Monitor Health in the project DermalAbyss health monitoring tattoo

Maintaining health is not just a personal fitness trend; it is the crucial root that makes everything look good and desirable. People today are conscious about their diets, workout routine, and everything that revolves around their health. In such times, the above experiments open doors of immense possibilities for the future of healthcare industry. People who need constant monitoring of specific body parameters like Type-1 and Type-2 diabetics, kidney patients, women, etc., can benefit significantly from such devices. Patients and doctors can finally stop worrying with the hope of eyeing similar but bigger and better devices in the future.

MIT and Harvard’s scientists came together to introduce a tattoo ink that changes color in response to a change in your sugar levels as well. They named the project DermalAbyss where the person getting inked gets a tattoo of their choice, whereas the tattoo yields more work than just styling. It could read the health parameters of the person through the body’s fluid interaction and tell if the person has issues of sugar, ph or sodium levels.

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