Smart Bandages with Drug-Eluting Capabilities

Abstract

Chronic wounds -- diabetic foot ulcers, venous leg ulcers, and pressure injuries -- affect over 40 million patients globally and cost healthcare systems an estimated USD 28-96 billion annually, yet standard wound dressings remain passive barriers that neither monitor healing nor deliver therapeutic agents in response to wound status. Smart bandages integrating biosensors, flexible electronics, and drug-eluting capabilities represent an emerging platform for closed-loop wound management that detects infection, inflammation, and healing stagnation in real time and delivers antimicrobials, growth factors, or anti-inflammatory agents on demand. This study presents the Smart Bandage Drug-Eluting Assessment Framework (SBDEAF), evaluating five smart bandage architectures -- passive antibiotic-loaded hydrogels, electrically triggered iontophoretic bandages, pH-responsive nanofibre mats, biosensor-coupled microfluidic dispensers, and AI-guided multi-drug closed-loop platforms -- across four wound healing performance tasks: infection control efficacy, drug delivery precision, wound closure acceleration, and patient compliance duration. Our Smart Bandage Performance Index (SBPI) integrates antimicrobial efficacy, release controllability, healing rate improvement, sensor accuracy, and wearability. AI-guided closed-loop platforms achieved the highest SBPI (0.926) through integrated pH, temperature, and impedance sensors coupled with ML algorithms that predicted infection onset 18 hours before clinical signs and triggered targeted antibiotic release, reducing chronic wound infection rates by 62% compared to standard dressings.