MIT to Build Body-Powered Patch That Catches Sepsis and Heart Failure Early

Bahai will be joined by MIT researchers Joel Voldman, the William R. Brody Professor of EECS; Tim Swager, the John D. MacArthur Professor of Chemistry; Hadley Sikes, the Willard Henry Dow Professor in Chemical Engineering; and Colin Stultz, the Nina T. and Robert H. Rubin Professor of EECS, along with additional clinical and industry collaborators.

"We have created an ecosystem of R&D, with MIT at the center of it, to facilitate not only leading-edge research, but also a path toward translation into a device that can be used in the clinic," Bahai says. "Our goal with this project is to impact the future of personalized health care."

How will the patch work?

PYTHIA grew out of the MIT Program for Health Sciences and Semiconductors (HS+S), which Bahai co-founded when he joined MIT three years ago. The program applies semiconductor and nanotechnology advances to diagnostics, therapeutics, and drug discovery.

The idea traces back to Bahai's earlier successful work on continuous glucose monitors, and to his "Waves, Bites, and Molecules" lab, which studies electrochemical devices, optics, magnetics, and ultrasonics. That glucose-monitor experience led the team to ask which other biomarkers semiconductor technology could track in real time.

The answer, for now, lies in interstitial fluid — the fluid under the skin. The patch will monitor heart failure and sepsis biomarkers there. These molecules, related to the onset of the diseases and normally found in blood plasma, are difficult to detect because they exist in very low concentrations.

The system will work in two steps:

• A chemical reaction binds specific chemicals to the biomarker molecules in the interstitial fluid, making them easier to identify.
• Advanced microelectronics in the patch measure the bound molecules with enough sensitivity for clinical applications.

Because the device will measure continuously and amass enormous volumes of data, PYTHIA will incorporate on-chip AI models to translate raw readings into information clinicians can use.

"This is kind of like having the patient give a blood test every 15 minutes or so, but it happens automatically. That is the power of this technology," Bahai says.

What happens next?

The team will begin developing and testing electronic components for the tiny, low-power chip. From there, they plan to advance the wearable through pre-clinical and clinical trials until it can be commercially scaled and manufactured, Bahai says.

"This project has real potential to improve health care because, in addition to leveraging MIT's leading-edge science and technology, we are also teaming up with clinical and industrial collaborators with direct experience of the practical constraints, the regulatory environment, and the clinical need," he says. "The impact of this research could be huge."

PYTHIA is funded through the ARPA-H Delphi Program, led by Program Manager Leonard Tender, in which research teams apply a microelectronics design strategy to biosensing to build devices that safely, securely, and continuously monitor the body's internal health signals. The project is supported by ARPA-H under agreement number AY2AX000243; the agency's official views are not necessarily represented by the announcement.

If the patch succeeds, it will offer what medicine has long lacked: a continuous read on killers that announce themselves too late.