Smart bandage could heal and monitor wounds at the same time, suggests study

Chronic wounds cause significant burdens on healthcare systems due to the complexities of continuous and changing care required.

Smart wound dressings that monitor infection or deliver healing therapeutics have emerged as a solution, but combining both monitoring and healing functions into one dressing has proven complex, until now.

Researchers at RMIT University created a method of embedding tiny, multi-functional nanomaterials — known as carbon dots — into hydrogel dressing that serve the dual functions of monitoring and treating wounds.

Carbon dots are biocompatible carbon-based nanoparticles that can be used to image and sense changes in a wound and combat wound inflammation as therapeutic artificial enzymes (nanozymes).

This new type of smart wound patch will change colour when there is pH change in the wound caused by infection. The colour change can be easily read out by portable smart devices. When these infection signals are detected, the system automatically releases therapeutic nanozymes into the wound to promote healing. The release of these therapeutic nanozymes can also be manually triggered by applying gentle pressure to the dressing, allowing clinicians or patients to provide additional treatment if required.

RMIT PhD candidate and study first author Nan Nan said the dual nature of this smart wound patch would support more timely and effective intervention from clinicians.

“Being able to address potential infection at the earliest opportunity is critical to chronic wound management, making this real-time system a potential game-changer for healthcare,” she said. Nan said their system using multifunctional carbon dots also cuts down on the complexity that typically comes with constructing smart wound dressings.

“Our fabrication process using medically ready materials, such as hydrogels, to embed carbon dots for wound dressing is easy and scalable, with strong potential for commercial translation,” she said.

Collaborator and Senior Lecturer at RMIT’s School of Engineering, Dr Haiyan Li, said their innovation provided a promising and adaptive platform that overcame some of the barriers that have stopped smart wound dressings being brought to market.

“Many smart wound dressings developed in research laboratories are difficult to translate into real clinical products because they rely on complex designs or expensive sensing systems,” she said.

“Our approach integrates sensing and dual-mode therapeutic functions into a single dressing with a simple, streamlined design, which helps address some of the key challenges that have previously limited commercial translation.”

“Importantly, this work has defined concise design rules for future smart dressings.”

Next steps

These initial studies were done at the lab scale, with validation in appropriate in vivo wound models being a key future step.

Researchers are looking to partner up with industry to refine and scale up the technology and bring smart wound patches to market.

Study lead and Senior Lecturer at RMIT’s School of Engineering, Dr Lei Bao says that next steps will focus on further biological testing and preparing the technology for real-world applications.

“Our next step is to evaluate how this technology performs in more advanced biological models and to work with industry partners to refine the design for real clinical use,” she said.

“Ultimately, our goal is to translate this research into practical smart wound dressings and integrate this smart platform into a digital health ecosystem, where the data from the patch is collected, analysed, and used to drive clinical decisions to advance chronic wound management.”

Reference:

Nan Nan, Qi Li, Cui Liu, Xiaoming Wen, Baohua Jia, Haiyan Li, Lei Bao, Carbon-dot nanozyme-empowered responsive hydrogels for smart wound dressing, Chemical Engineering Science,https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ces.2025.123225.