The University of Pennsylvania, MIT and the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana are in the process of creating a surreal design involving LEDs, implants and tattoos. Researchers are working to create an implant that uses silicon-and-silk that will sit beneath the skin. In an invention that has already been applied to laboratory mice, this unique design is capable of turning the person's skin into a display screen.
Source Technology Review
These tattoos won't just make a fashion statement, in fact these LED tattoos will be used for displaying medical information about the individual. By embedding an electronic silicon transistor under the skin the LED tattoos will be able to display blood-sugar readings and more. This was created in effort to help people with long time medical problems that sometimes go unnoticed by others around them.
For example people with epilepsy, when their vitals get low this will be able to send a visual alert alerting people within close proximity.?The research is also focused on helping people with "implantable neurodevices, functional neurosurgery, network and computational neuroscience, movement disorders, intra-operative and ICU monitoring, major mental illness, and other brain network disorders."
The silk substrate of the silicon-and-silk device that was embedded beneath the skin eventually dissolves into the body, leaving just the electronic implant. Keep in mind these are rather tiny, the size of a small grain of rice. This may sound rare but animals have been implanted with electronic chips for sometime via the RFID tags. The designers have a few other uses planned for this petite LED implant, visit MIT's Technology Review's article for more information: Implantable Silicon-Silk Electronics
