IEEE Spectrum’s most popular biomedical stories of the last year centered both on incorporating new technologies and revamping old ones. While AI is all the rage in most sectors—including biomed, with applications like an in-brain warning system for worsening mental health and a model to estimate heart rate in real time—biomedical news this past year has also focused on legacy technologies. Tech like Wi-Fi, ultrasound, and lasers have all made comebacks or found new uses in 2025.
Whether innovation stems from new tech or old, IEEE Spectrum will continue to cover it rigorously in 2026.
1. Next-Gen Brain Implants Offer New Hope for Depression
Georgia Institute of Technology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai and TeraPixel
When Patricio Riva Posse, a psychiatrist at Emory University School of Medicine, realized that his patient’s brain implants were sending him signals about her worsening depression before she even recognized anything was wrong, he wished he could have taken action sooner.
That experience led him and colleagues to develop “an automatic alarm system” for signs of changing mental health. The tool monitors brain signals in real time, using implants to record electrical impulses, and AI to analyze the outputs and flag warning signs of relapse. Other research groups across the United States are experimenting with different ways to use these stimulating brain implants to help treat depression, both with and without the help of AI. “There are so many levers we can press here,” neurosurgeon Nir Lipsman says in the article.
2. These Graphene Tattoos Are Actually Biosensors
Dmitry Kireev/University of Massachusetts Amherst
In Dmitry Kireev’s lab at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, researchers are developing imperceptibly thin graphene tattoos capable of monitoring your vital signs and more. “Electronic tattoos could help people track complex medical conditions, including cardiovascular, metabolic, immune system, and neurodegenerative diseases. Almost half of U.S. adults may be in the early stages of one or more of these disorders right now, although they don’t yet know it,” he wrote in an article for IEEE Spectrum.
How does it work? Graphene is conductive, strong, and flexible, able to measure features like heart rate and the presence of certain compounds in sweat. For now, the tattoos need to be plugged into a regular electronic circuit, but Kireev hopes that they will soon be integrated into smartwatches, and thus simpler to wear.
3. How Wi-Fi Signals Can Be Used to Detect Your Heartbeat
Erika Cardema/UC Santa Cruz
Wi-Fi can do more than just get you connected to the internet—it can help monitor your heart inexpensively and without requiring constant physical contact. The new approach, called Pulse-Fi, uses an AI model to analyze heartbeats to estimate heart rate in real time from up to 10 feet away.
The system is low cost, totaling around US $40, easy to deploy, and doesn’t introduce discomfort. It also works regardless of the user’s posture and in all kinds of environments. Katia Obraczka, a computer scientist at the University of California, Santa Cruz who led the development of Pulse-Fi, says the team plans to commercialize the technology.
4. Doctors Could Hack the Nervous System With Ultrasound
Shonagh Rae
Sangeeta S. Chavan and Stavros Zanos, biomedical researchers at the Institute of Bioelectronic Medicine in New York, hypothesize that ultrasound waves may activate neurons, offering “a precise and safe way to provide healing treatments for a wide range of both acute and chronic maladies,” as they write in an article for Spectrum. Targeted ultrasound could then serve as a treatment for inflammation or diabetes, instead of medication with wide-ranging side effects, they say.
It works by vibrating a neuron’s membrane and “opening channels that allow ions to flow into the cell, thus indirectly changing the cell’s voltage and causing it to fire,” they write. The authors think that activating specific neurons can help address the root causes of specific illnesses.
5. Scientists Shine a Laser Through a Human Head
Extreme Light group/University of Glasgow
If a doctor wants to see inside your head, they have to decide whether they want to do so cheaply or deeply—an electroencephalograph is inexpensive, but doesn’t penetrate past the outer layers of the brain, while functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is expensive, but can see all the way in. Shining a laser through a person’s head seems like the first step towards technology that accomplishes both.
For many years, this kind of work has seemed impossible because the human head is so good at blocking light, but researchers have now proven that lasers can send photons all the way through. “What was thought impossible, we’ve shown to be possible. And hopefully…that could inspire the next generation of these devices,” project lead Jack Radford says in the article.
6. Robots Are Starting to Make Decisions in the Operating Room
Jiawei Ge
In the not-to-distant future, surgical patients may hear “The robot will see you now,” as the authors of this story suggest. The three researchers work at the Johns Hopkins University robotics lab responsible for developing Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot (STAR), which performed the first autonomous soft-tissue surgery in a live animal in 2016.
While there are certainly challenges remaining in the quest to bring autonomous robots into the operating room—like developing general purpose robotic controllers and collecting data within strict privacy regulations—the end goal is on the horizon. “A scenario in which patients are routinely greeted by a surgeon and an autonomous robotic assistant is no longer a distant possibility,” the authors write.
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