Apart from decoration, which is the most common motive for getting a tattoo, tattoos have been used for thousands of years to identify the clan and lineage of a person. But now researchers have created a color-changing tattoo that understands the human body and provide real-time updates on the body’s health.
Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard Medical School have teamed up to develop three different types of biosensor tattoo ink to monitor dynamic levels in the blood.
Biosensor tattoo ink monitors your health in real time
Once the ink is tattooed onto the body of an individual, the tattoo ink will respond to the interstitial fluid in the skin and change color based on the levels of glucose, sodium, or pH of the body. For example, the tattoo ink designed to track glucose levels will change color from blue to brown when a person’s blood sugar level rises.
This tattoo technology could potentially be used to help a vast population of diabetics to monitor their disease. Currently, people who have type 1 diabetes need to regularly monitor their glucose levels by piercing their skin multiple times a day. This painful procedure could be replaced with the biosensor tattoo to monitor the glucose levels and the need for insulin.
