SMART Healthcare: Self-healing Materials for Advanced Repairable Technologies in Healthcare

自我修复材料在日常生活中具有很大的优势，因为它们可以降低维修成本，更经济地使用资源，并延长产品寿命。在医疗领域，他们可以让高度依赖他们的设备的用户生活在没有维修或更换这些设备的不便和不适的情况下。生物学已经进化出高度发达的自我修复机制，例如关闭伤口，但目前的人造材料无法与之相比。该项目旨在利用合成生物学的最新进展，将生物机制与人造材料相结合。这将创造出自我修复的医疗设备，如生理传感器和假肢，为用户带来更高的生活质量。

Self-healing materials are of great advantage in everyday life as they allow for reduced repair costs, more economical use of resources, and increased product lifetimes. In the medical sector, they could allow users who are highly reliant on their devices to live without the inconvenience and discomfort of having to repair or replace these. Biology has evolved highly developed mechanisms for self-healing, e.g. to close a wound, however current man-made materials do not compare. This project aims to use recent advances in synthetic biology to combine biological mechanisms with man-made materials. This will create medical devices such as physiological sensors and prostheses that are self-healing, leading to a higher quality of life for the user.