Towards wearable and implantable continuous drug monitoring: A review

Continuous drug monitoring is a promising alternative to current therapeutic drug monitoring strategies and has a strong potential to reshape our understanding of pharmacokinetic variability and to improve individualised therapy. This review highlights recent advances in biosensing technologies that support continuous drug monitoring in real time. We focus primarily on aptamer-based biosensors, wearable and implantable devices. Emphasis is given to the approaches employed in constructing biosensors. We pay attention to sensors’ biocompatibility, calibration performance, long-term characteristics stability and measurement quality. Last, we discuss the current challenges and issues to be addressed in continuous drug monitoring to make it a promising, future tool for individualised therapy. The ongoing efforts are expected to result in fully integrated implantable drug biosensing technology. Thus, we may anticipate an era of advanced healthcare in which wearable and implantable biochips will automatically adjust drug dosing in response to patient health conditions, thus enabling the management of diseases and enhancing individualised therapy.