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Smart regenerative implants in trauma care

Trauma patients require extensive treatments and the greatest attention, with about 80,000 cases annually in the Netherlands.

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For example, when a trauma patient arrives at a hospital with multiple bone fractures, ruptured blood vessels, and damaged organs, they will require multiple surgeries for internal injuries and immobilisation of broken bones with a cast or brace.

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So-called smart implants are now being developed that can stimulate bone growth, help regenerate tissue, and monitor patient healing in real time. Monitoring devices can be powered by blood flow, muscle movement, or even breathing.

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In addition, smart implants to restore and support skeletal and muscular tissue can be made from biodegradable materials, which are then naturally excreted by a patient; thus eliminating the need for further invasive surgery to remove the implants.

Maturity

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Emergence of DNA-based data storage to preserve data for a very long time Towards cloud native services and application design for research Exploring biological systems for computing Hardware development acceleration Advances in brain-controlled technologies Rise of the Humanoids Smart regenerative implants in trauma care

Drivers

Impact

education

Education

  • Innovation in smart implant treatments requires and needs collaboration across various disciplines – medicine, biology, chemistry, physics, materials science, and engineering (including e.g. data sciences for simulations). As a result, students must cover a broader range of fields and perspectives.
  • Students will be provided with the opportunity to learn together, interact more closely, and develop a deeper understanding of how different disciplines connect. Traditional education models (in e.g. medical and health) will need to evolve – becoming more flexible and allowing students to cross boundaries between fields and disciplines more easily.
  • Interdisciplinary thinking for the challenges of future smart implant-based healthcare and technologies, should in the long term, broaden career development.
Research

Research

  • Considerable research on smart implants is already taking place both in universities and in research facilities at hospitals. For instance, smart bone-related implants are intended to replace the traditional inert metal-based implants currently used in treatments.
  • Clinical implementation of such smart implants will need to follow a structured roadmap, while key issues such as the powering smart implants used for monitoring and understanding how native biological cells in the body interact with smart implants require further investigation.