High-Tech Healing: From Precision Surgeries to Rapid Diagnoses

How hard is “hard”? If I asked you to press down firmly, how much pressure would you use? Normally these small differences don’t matter. But imagine you’re a surgeon carefully clamping a patient's artery. In these moments, applying the wrong pressure could have serious consequences. We’re developing smart gloves to measure exactly how much pressure a surgeon is using and give real-time feedback, helping them fine-tune their touch. And we’re not stopping there! Surgeons will also train using virtual reality and robotics so they can test out how different levels of pressure affect the body.

From blood sugar monitors for diabetes to quick COVID-19 tests, portable health sensors are a big part of modern medicine. But for serious conditions like sepsis, kidney disease or cancer, creating fast, accurate tests is much harder. These diseases involve tracking multiple warning signs in different body fluids like blood and urine. Current sensors sometimes give false alarms, leading to wrong treatments and in the worst cases, could be fatal. Our team is using nanotechnology to make these devices more reliable—without sacrificing their speed—so they can truly save lives.