Heart Attack Monitoring Patch (HAMP)

Every year more than 60 million people live with Cardiovascular Disease (CVD), and more than 1.8 million people die as a result of CVD, accounting for 36% of all deaths. Among different types of CVD, heart attack and stroke are the leading cause of death in the EU.

The recognized guidelines identify the first one hour after the onset of a heart attack as the golden hour to receive proper medical assistance and prevent death or damage to organs.

Hence, there is a vital need for a compact and easy-to-use biosensing platform that can be used outside hospital settings by the patient or the ambulance staff for diagnosis of heart attack within the golden hour. NT-pro-BNP is a desirable biomarker due to its fast release kinetics, higher circulation levels and lower fluctuations.

Although significant advances in NT-pro-BNP biosensors generations have been achieved, these face some serious limitations as most of them cannot be used outside hospital settings, requiring physical attendance of patients which leads to losing time (beyond the golden hour) and increased risk of death.

In this project, I propose for the first time a wearable and wireless system for early and quick diagnosis of a heart attack outside the hospital setting.

The Heart Attack Monitoring Patch (HAMP) that I propose here, is composed of an AC Electrokinetic (ACEK)-based fast-response label-free NT-pro-BNP biosensor, microneedles array for interstitial fluid sampling and data processing, and wireless communication circuits.

Although the ACEK phenomenon is a well-established method for the design of rapid biosensors, this is for the first time that the ACEK effect is employed by a wearable biosensing system for high speed (less than a minute) and low LOD (below 1 pg/mL) detection.

The HAMP has a compact and conformal structure that is easy to use and can be used when patients feel the first symptoms of a heart attack and results can be conveniently sent to the nearby hospitals within the golden hour.