Despite huge efforts and investments in biosensor research and development over several decades, and apparently promising developments, implantable devices capable of providing long-term (months, years) continuous monitoring of key molecular disease markers remain far from practical implementation. The reasons for this are many-fold, but the most important relate to fundamental materials challenges associated with biocompatibility, and practical barriers related to checking of system integrity. While the management of many chronic health conditions clearly would improve significantly from advances in continuous long-term monitoring, the management of diabetes is most apparent, due to the scale of the problem, and its huge impact on people, society and our health systems. Today, the state of the art in diabetes patient care is around 10-15 days continuous monitoring via devices that are attached to the body, and monitor glucose in interstitial fluid via a very fine filament that penetrates through the skin to access the sample . Examples include the Abbott Freestyle Libre (https://www.freestylelibre.ie)and the Dexcom G6 Technologies (http://dexcom.eu/).<br/><br/>These disruptive developments will drive demand for improved sensor performance, which places an increasing focus on how to dramatically extend the functional lifetime of such biosensors, which in turn will drive new thinking around the fundamental materials challenges of long-term on-body/in-body biosensing and controlled therapeutics (in this case insulin delivery) . In this lecture, I will discuss these and related issues, and speculate on strategies for delivering longer-term sensing and control functions based on the inherent behaviour of materials, rather than conventional approaches. I will also discuss the need to review the sensor related aspects of papers much more rigorously, in order to manage the longer-term negative impact of unrealistic media interpretations.

Rethinking on/in-body biochemical sensing strategies to achieve long-term functionality

2019 Fall National Meeting

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.