Smart Bandages™

This child is wearing a model of the Smart Eye Patch™. Images below are the eye patch design (patent pending) and the eye patch disassembled to reveal how electronic elements are being incorporated.

BioKey Engineering is developing a series of new devices called Smart Bandages. Smart Bandages are pads that contain sensors and data processing components. The first example of a Smart Bandage to be developed and marketed is the Smart Eye Patch™, for use in the treatment of amblyopia. Smart Eye Patches are eye patches that monitor when they are used. They process and store this information, and report the processed information back to the prescribing doctor. This information is needed to properly assess treatment of a common but significant visual disorder, amblyopia.

Amblyopia, also known as lazy eye, is a visual disorder in which one eye is much weaker than the other. It is associated with decreased visual acuity, poor depth perception, and possibly decreased visual fields of view. To be effective, treatment must occur in early childhood. The longstanding preferred treatment is to patch the dominant eye. Effectiveness of patching is unknown, due to uncertain or poor patient compliance. Compliance monitoring is impractical with conventional patches. Present compliance-monitoring patches are so impractically bulky and expensive that a new type of device is needed. Monitoring will be automatic with Smart Eye Patches.

At least 2 percent of children born each year have or will develop amblyopia. That treatment can be monitored, assessed and improved through the use of the Smart Eye Patch. Monitoring and assessment will benefit the involved children, their doctors, and third-party payers through better and more efficient treatment.

The Smart Eye Patch was suggested to BioKey Engineering by Dr. Jan-Tjeerd H.N. de Faber, an ophthalmologist at the Rotterdam Eye Hospital in the Netherlands. Dr. Sternberg, of BioKey Engineering, recognized that Smart Eye Patches are only the first of a class of new devices, Smart Bandages, which can be used to solve many different commercially significant problems.

The Smart Bandage project matured to the point of filing for a major patent on October 9, 1997. On September 8, 1998, this project was announced to the ophthalmic community at a meeting of the International Strabismological Association in Maastricht, the Netherlands. On March 9, 1999, the United States Patent Office awarded to Drs. Sternberg and de Faber, as inventors, U.S. Patent Number 5,879,292, "Bandages with Data Acquisition Components." This project has since been reported by the New York Times, National Public Radio, and other general and professional publications.

If you would like to be informed of the progress of this project or if you would like to advise or participate in it, please contact BioKey Engineering.