Healing Powers

A new military-sponsored program aims to develop a tiny device that can be implanted in the body, where it will use electrical impulses to monitor the body's organs, healing these crucial parts when they become infected or injured.

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Known as Electrical Prescriptions, or ElectRx, the program could reduce dependence on pharmaceutical drugs and offer a new way to treat illnesses, according to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the branch of the U.S. Department of Defense responsible for developing the program.

"The technology DARPA plans to develop through the ElectRx program could fundamentally change the manner in which doctors diagnose, monitor and treat injury and illness," Doug Weber, program  manager for DARPA's biological technologies office, said in a statement.

The implant that DARPA hopes to develop is something akin to a tiny, intelligent pacemaker, Weber said. The device would be implanted into the body, where it would continually assess a person's condition and provide any necessary stimulus to the nerves to help maintain healthy organ function, he added.

The idea for the technology is based on a biological process known as neuromodulation, in which the peripheral nervous   system (the nerves that connect every other part of the body to the brain and spinal cord) monitors the status of internal organs and regulate the body's responses to infection and disease. 

When a person is sick or injured, this natural process can sometimes be thrown off, according to DARPA. Instead of making a person feel better, neuromodulation can actually exacerbate a condition, causing pain, inflammation and a weakened immune system.

But with the help of an electrically charged implant, DARPA says it can keep neuromodulation under control. Electric impulses from the device will stimulate the nerve patterns that help the body heal itself and keep the out-of-whack nerve stimulus patterns that cause a sick person even greater harm from doing damage.

DARPA hopes to develop a device so tiny that it can be implanted using only a needle. Such a small implant would be a huge improvement over similar neuromodulation devices already in use today, most of which are about the size of a deck of cards and require invasive surgery to implant, according to DARPA.