Body sensation at all scales

Sensors that track everything from infection in the lungs to using WiFi on a crowded college campus are poised to enhance our understanding and approach to improving human health on many levels, a trend that has been accelerated by challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic, researchers and experts said at the SENSE.nano 2020 Symposium.

Videos of the event are now available online, so anyone can view presentations and panel discussions with research and industry leaders, representatives from MIT-launched startup companies, and current MIT graduate students.

Held online earlier this semester, the symposium offered a look at how sensing technologies are being used to detect and quantify life at all scales, from the subcellular to large populations. It was the fourth annual meeting organized by SENSE.nano on significant topics related to disciplines and sectors with a focus on sensors, detection systems and detection technologies.

“The realization of SENSE.nano as an online virtual event allowed more than 600 people from 250 organizations to join us for the three half days of the symposium,” says Vladimir Bulović, director of the founding faculty of MIT.nano and Fariborz Maseeh Professor of Emerging Technology. “Over 80% of the participants were from industry, achieving our goal of relating academic breakthroughs with professionals who can vastly scale these ideas.”

Check out the full agenda and watch the videos of the speakers and sessions.

The event included sessions on sensing at four levels: cellular and subcellular, organs, body systems and populations. “The focus was on life as a system. The functions of the body and how we interact as humans were celebrated on a large scale at SENSE.nano 2020, “says Brian W. Anthony, associate director of MIT.nano and lead lecturer for the Industrial Immersion Program in Mechanical Engineering. “The SENSE event helped highlight what is happening at these different scales, made some connections between the search domains explicit, and hopefully also made some opportunities explicit.”

Many of the presentations focused on applications for the current pandemic. Speakers discussed rapid antigen detection for infectious pathogens, detecting Covid-19-related voice changes using cell phones, and understanding how pandemic misinformation spreads through social media, among other topics. . A panel discussion offered insights into how the pandemic is affecting workspace design, clinical trials and child development; another panel discussion offered information on unique needs and opportunities for business innovations.

Elazer Edelman, director of the MIT Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES) and keynote speaker on the first day of the symposium, offered a historical perspective on body perception through the lens of his care for a cardiovascular patient who developed Covid-19. From the glass models of Leonardo da Vinci’s heart circulation to the 19 devices that collect data from the cardiovascular patient’s hospital bed, healthcare has been transformed by a “marriage of medicine and science and engineering technology at all levels that it actually changed our lives, “Edelman said.

Researchers working at the forefront of sensing technology must commit to sharing their findings, warned Edelman, who is also Edward J. Poitras’ professor of medical engineering and science at MIT. “The most important thing, I think, is to realize that engineers like us, scientists like us, doctors like us, have a responsibility to the community, not just the clinic or the hospital. The most important thing we can do, therefore, is to make all our technology available as quickly as possible to the general population. “

Digital technology “is finally becoming mature enough and gives us the tools to revolutionize the way healthcare will be delivered,” said Brendan Cronin, director of Analog Devices’ Digital Healthcare Group and keynote speaker on the second day of the symposium. . “Nano sensors will be used to diagnose disease more quickly and will be used to invent new medicines in the case of synthetic biology, smart devices will regularly monitor our body and environment and help manage our disease semi or autonomously,” [and] doctors will routinely use digital tools to predict acute events rather than react to them, ”he said.

Sensing technologies face many of the same acceptance, fairness, and ease of use challenges found throughout healthcare, the researchers suggested in another roundtable. Sensors and sensing systems need to be developed with user guidance on exactly what information or decisions they need to make with this data, while leveraging ubiquitous technologies such as cell phones, they noted. The speakers also warned against the development of technologies and systems that replicate the prejudices against people of color and women that have led to unequal care in the past.

The symposium was sponsored by MIT.nano, the MIT Industrial Liaison Program, the MIT Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, and the MIT Clinical Research Center.