Bioenergy-Based Closed-Loop Medical Systems for the Integration of Treatment, Monitoring, and Feedback

Wearable healthcare systems have captured the interest of researchers because they enable smarter and more personalized healthcare. However, these systems are limited by a separation between biosensors and therapeutic units that results in interrupted treatment and compromised patient recovery. It is therefore imperative to develop wearable closed-loop medical devices that fully integrate physiological/pathological monitoring, signal feedback detection, diagnostics, and on-demand therapeutic administration. Such systems require safe, sustainable, and continuously operating power sources, and bioenergy has gained attention in this regard because it can be sourced continuously from the human body without requiring substantial rigid energy storage space. The effective utilization of bioenergy would enable the realization of a self-driven closed-loop medical system with treatment-monitoring feedback.