Come gli impianti alimentati dall’IA potrebbero sostituire gli analgesici oppioidi

Comprendere il dolore cronico e le sue sfide

Modern anesthesia and pain medications have helped alleviate what was one of medicine’s most unsolvable problems: pain.

However, this is only partially true for chronic pain, which affects hundreds of millions of people globally. According to the U.S. Pain Foundation, 51.6 million Americans live with chronic pain. For over 17 million sufferers, their chronic pain is high-impact, frequently limiting their life or work activities. 

When the cause of pain is not a specific moment, but a recurring issue, it can become very hard for chemical treatment to work properly.

One problem is that the body tends to adapt to drugs, and they progressively lose efficiency, forcing patients to increase dosage over time, or suffer without a good alternative option.

Another issue is that strong painkillers are generally of the opioid class, a type of drug known to cause dependency.

Opioids are prescribed to no less than 40 million patients annually in the USA alone. Each year, they cause 85,000+ patients in acute pain to develop addiction (opioid use disorder), and 10% develop prolonged opioid use later on.

Such a level of addiction is immensely costly for society at large, estimated to represent a cost of $180B annually in the USA alone.

This is why non-opioid drugs, or non-chemical pain medications, could be a life-changing medical treatment for millions, and potentially a market worth tens of billions of dollars.

One example is Vertex Pharmaceuticals (VRTX ), with a new class of pain medication that cannot cause addiction, just approved in 2025. Fungus-derived painkillers could also be an option one day.

Researchers at the University of Southern California, National Chin-Yi University of Technology (Taiwan), the University of California, and San Diego State University are working on an implantable wireless electronic stimulator that could also help alleviate pain without any drugs.

They published their results in Nature Electronics¹, under the title “A programmable and self-adaptive ultrasonic wireless implant for personalized chronic pain management”.

Come gli impianti elettrici interrompono i segnali del dolore

Al suo interno, il dolore è semplicemente un segnale elettrico trasportato dal nervo verso il cervello. Sfortunatamente, l’evoluzione ha reso questo segnale molto spiacevole, e uno che semplicemente non possiamo ignorare. Da qui la necessità di farmaci come gli oppioidi, che cercano di attenuare la ricezione del segnale del dolore nel cervello.

An alternative option is to directly interfere with the electric signal itself. This is the promise of implantable electrical stimulators, which directly stimulate the spinal cord to block pain signals from reaching the brain.

Unfortunately, these devices have not seen widespread adoption due to many technical drawbacks like high cost, the need for invasive surgery, hardwired batteries, and the need for frequent battery replacements.

This is why the new device invented by the researchers, flexible and rechargeable wirelessly, is a potential game changer.

Fonte: Viterbi School

Ricarica wireless piezoelettrica: una svolta

As regular battery replacement has been one of the most problematic parts of previous electrical stimulators for pain, requiring regular extra surgery, this has been the center of the researchers’ work.

The idea is to convert mechanical waves into electrical signals through a phenomenon called the piezoelectric effect.

They used a miniaturized piezoelectric element made from lead zirconate titanate (PZT), a highly efficient material for converting incoming ultrasound energy into the electrical power needed for stimulation.

Ultrasound is a good option for medical devices, as they can carry energy deep within the body without causing damage.

This is a trendy idea in the space of medical devices, with another ultrasound-powered implant, for pacemakers this time, also announced by a team of Korean researchers in giugno 2025.

“This energy-converting type is critical for deep stimulation, as ultrasound is a non-invasive and highly penetrating energy in clinical and medical areas.

By leveraging wireless ultrasonic energy transfer and a closed-loop feedback system, this UIWI stimulator removes the necessity for bulky implanted batteries and allows for real-time, precisely adjustable pain modulation.”

Yushun Zeng – PhD Student

Utilizzo dell’IA e delle reti neurali per il controllo del dolore

The UIWI stimulator itself is flexible, bendable, and twistable, allowing for optimal placement on the spinal cord.

Fonte: Viterbi School

The way it works is by using electrical stimulation to rebalance the signals that transmit and inhibit pain, effectively suppressing the sensation of pain.

Testing the devices on lab rats, the researchers successfully relieved chronic neuropathic pain caused by both mechanical stimuli and acute thermal stimuli.

What’s more, the device is adaptive, regulating its “electrical treatment” according to the amount of pain actually present.

“What truly sets this device apart is its wireless, smart and self-adaptive capability for pain management.

We believe it offers great potential to replace pharmacological schemes and conventional electrical stimulation approaches, aligning with clinical needs for pain mitigation.”

Qifa Zhou – Professor of Ophthalmology at the Keck School of Medicine of USC

This was done by using a neural network called ResNet-18, and continuously monitoring brain recordings, specifically electroencephalogram (EEG) signals, which reflect a patient’s pain levels.

The neural network analyzes these brain signals and classifies pain into three distinct levels: slight pain, moderate pain, and extreme pain. This AI model boasts a 94.8% overall accuracy in distinguishing between these pain states.

Once a pain level is identified, the wearable ultrasound transmitter automatically adjusts the acoustic energy it transmits. The sonic energy gets converted into electrical energy, stimulating the spinal cord.

Fonte: ResearchGate

This creates a closed-loop system that provides real-time, personalized pain management.

Because the energy transmission is through infrasound, there is no need for further surgery past the initial implantation of the device around the spinal cord, and the power level can be modulated in real-time by the infrasound intensity.

“From a clinical standpoint, incorporating deep learning–based pain assessment enables dynamic interpretation and response to fluctuating pain states, which is essential for accommodating patient-specific variability.”

Chen Gong

Qual è il futuro degli impianti per il dolore basati sull’IA?

Because the device is regulated by a neural network, it can be adapted to each patient’s specific nervous system, instead of having to find a solution that matches everybody. In itself, it is a radical departure from the usual medical protocols for pain mitigation.

The next step would be to even further improve the implant design, notably making it even smaller, reducing how invasive the implantation would be. Ideally, it could one day be injected just with a syringe.

The wearable ultrasound device could also become itself wireless, or even a wearable ultrasound array patch.

Control of the system should probably be transferred to a smartphone for a commercialized version of this technology, giving a higher level of personalization and control to the patient.

Investire nella HealthTech 

Koninklijke Philips N.V.

Philips è un noto marchio di elettronica di consumo (rasoio, spazzolini elettrici), attivo anche nel settore sanitario. Ad esempio, è stato il numero 1 per le domande di brevetto MedTech in Europa nel 2022. È attivo nei prodotti medici connessi, dai dispositivi indossabili all’imaging, ai respiratori e ai robot medici.

L’azienda è anche attiva nei semiconduttori (inclusa la tecnologia maglev) e nell’alta tecnologia/robotica/automazione, con ogni attività che condivide una base tecnologica comune.

Fonte: Philips

Philips offre dispositivi indossabili per metriche cardiache, respiratorie e di attività. I suoi sensori possono essere integrati in smartwatch, monitor di salute, patch mediche e tracker di attività.

L’esperienza di Philips in sensori biocompatibili, semiconduttori e soluzioni wireless potrebbe renderla leader negli impianti medici avanzati con ricarica wireless.

Per i dispositivi medici, Philips preferisce una soluzione di partnership, dove sviluppa per terze parti i loro dispositivi medici IoT (Internet of Things) connessi, pienamente compatibili con il resto delle soluzioni Philips. In questo contesto, offre ai clienti prototipazione, consulenza normativa, sviluppo prodotto end‑to‑end e produzione su scala industriale.

Ciò rende Philips un’azienda focalizzata sulla tecnologia e un candidato probabile per integrare rapidamente le innovazioni nei dispositivi medici esistenti. In totale, i dispositivi Philips hanno direttamente influenzato più di 1,8 miliardi di persone.

L’azienda vuole creare un ambiente sanitario digitale completamente integrato dove i sensori corrispondono ai dispositivi, e poi utilizzare molteplici soluzioni di connettività per integrarsi nella soluzione Philips HealthSuite Cloud e consentire analisi approfondite dei dati.

Fonte: Philips

Come fornitore dell’industria MedTech, spesso produce per altri marchi, Philips non è così visibile nel settore come altre aziende più prominenti. Tuttavia, è esperta nella costruzione di dispositivi elettronici ad alte prestazioni e sensori, spingendo spesso i confini di ciò che è possibile nel suo segmento in ambito sanitario e indossabili.

Con l’integrazione crescente di dispositivi indossabili ed elettronica medica nei protocolli sanitari, è probabile che il segmento Healthcare di Philips cresca come parte del conglomerato.

Ultime notizie e sviluppi sulle azioni di Koninklijke Philips N.V. (PHG)

Studio di riferimento

^{1. Zeng, Y., Gong, C., Lu, G. et al. Un impianto ultrasonico wireless programmabile e auto‑adattivo per la gestione personalizzata del dolore cronico. Nature Electronics 8, 437–449 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-025-01374-6}