Using Google Glass to monitor organs-on-chips

Testing the effects of drug compounds on the human body can be dicey with live subjects. Devices called organs-on-chips give researchers the opportunity to test these drugs and predict physiological responses in an ethical way before human drug trials begin.

While organs-on-chips help researchers predict these responses with high accuracy in a laboratory setting, monitoring the results of these experiments from a conventional desktop computer has several limitations, especially when the results must be monitored over the course of hours, days or even weeks.

Google Glass, one of the newest forms of wearable technology, offers researchers a hands-free and flexible monitoring system. To make Google Glass work for their purposes, researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) custom developed hardware and software that takes advantage of voice control command and other features in order to not only monitor but also remotely control their liver- and heart-on-a-chip systems. Using valves remotely activated by the Glass, the team introduced pharmaceutical compounds on liver organoids and collected the results. Their results have been published in Scientific Reports.

“We believe such a platform has widespread applications in biomedicine and may be further expanded to healthcare settings where remote monitoring and control could make things safer and more efficient,” said senior author Ali Khademhosseini, PhD, director of the Biomaterials Innovation Research Center at BWH.

“This may be of particular importance in cases where experimental conditions threaten human life — such as work involving highly pathogenic bacteria or viruses or radioactive compounds,” said leading author Shrike Zhang, PhD, also of BWH’s Biomedical Division.

Originally published here.