Projects: What we do

Smart Bandages

BioKey Engineering is best known for the invention and development of Smart Bandages™ and the Smart Eye Patch.

Smart Bandages are devices that a person wears, that contain sensors and data processing components. They are useful because they can detect and evaluate significant factors in their environment. These factors may include matters as diverse as problems that might be developing under a wound-covering bandage, a diabetic's need for insulin, or a soldier's need to locate a sniper.

Consider that in a few years, you or a member of your family are likely to visit your doctor, where you will have a choice to use:

• a traditional bandage that covers problems and obscures complications, or
• a Smart Bandage, that includes sensors to detect changes and data processors to evaluate their significance and report issues to you or your doctor, or even to correct problems before you are aware of them.

The first Smart Bandage to be developed is a Smart Eye Patch, for usage in monitoring the treatment of lazy eye (amblyopia). This project was suggested by Dr. Jan-Tjeerd H.N. de Faber, an ophthalmologist at the Rotterdam Eye Hospital in the Netherlands. Smart Bandages and the Smart Eye Patch are covered by U.S. Patent Number 5,879,292, "Bandages with Data Acquisition Components," of which Dr. de Faber is a co-inventor, along with BioKey Engineering founder Dr. Edward Sternberg. This patent and Smart Bandages have been reviewed in news media including the New York Times and National Public Radio.

Smart Bandages lie at the juncture of biotechnology and information technology, as these fields fuse. Smart Bandages will improve health care diagnosis and treatment.

More information is available on Smart Bandages and the Smart Eye Patch.

Other Projects

BioKey Engineering is developing other types of Smart Bandages besides the Smart Eye Patch, and has other projects besides Smart Bandages.