Korean Team Develops Nanotech Health Monitoring Tattoo

Researchers in South Korea may have found a way to let patients receive a tattoo that alerts them to health issues.

As Reuters reported Tuesday (Aug. 2), a team at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in the city of Daejeon has created an electronic tattoo ink made from liquid metal and carbon nanotubes that acts as a bioelectrode.

Once connected to an electrocardiogram (ECG) device or other biosensors, the device can send a readout of a patient’s vital signs and heart rate to a monitor. Eventually, the researchers hope to be able to do without biosensors.

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

Researchers say the monitors could be located anywhere, including in patients’ homes. The ink, meanwhile, is non-invasive and made from particles based on gallium, a soft metal used in thermometers. The nanotubes conduct electricity and make the ink more durable.

“When it is applied to the skin, even with rubbing the tattoo doesn’t come off, which is not possible with just liquid metal,” Park said.

This research comes at a time when nearly 40% of patients in the U.S. are using digital healthcare options, whether that’s for counseling, telemedicine or both, according to a recent PYMNTS and CareCredit study.

Our research found that the share of patients using one or more digital healthcare options has risen, from 34% last November to 38% in May 2022.

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The share of patients using these services varies from generation and by type of healthcare, with the youngest generations — bridge millennials, millennials and Generation Z — most likely to use digital healthcare.

Older consumers are the least likely to use these services, with 84% of patients in this age group saying they do not use digital healthcare.