United States | Healthcare & MedTech, Technology & Innovation
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed experimental bioresorbable batteries designed to power electronic medical devices inside the digestive tract and gradually break down after use.
The research addresses a major challenge in the development of ingestible electronics: how to provide enough power for a medical device to perform a useful task while reducing the amount of persistent hardware that remains in the body afterwards.
Published in Nature Chemical Engineering on 21 September 2026, the study was led by former MIT postdoctoral researcher Mehmet Girayhan Say, with Giovanni Traverso serving as senior author.
In preclinical experiments involving pigs, the batteries powered systems capable of wireless communication and supported a capsule that delivered electrical stimulation to stomach tissue.
The findings demonstrate the potential of temporary power systems for ingestible electronics, but the technology remains experimental and has not yet been established as ready for routine use in humans.
Why Ingestible Medical Devices Need Different Batteries
Electronic devices designed to operate inside the digestive tract face very different engineering conditions from conventional consumer electronics.
An ingestible capsule may need electricity to power a sensor, send information to an external receiver or deliver electrical stimulation to tissue.
At the same time, the device must operate in an environment that is wet, acidic and constantly changing as food, fluids and digestive processes move through the gastrointestinal system.
Conventional batteries are typically protected by strong casings designed to prevent the materials inside them from reacting with the surrounding environment.
Inside the human body, however, a damaged or leaking battery could present serious safety concerns.
MIT researchers are therefore exploring a different approach: a battery built using materials that can provide useful electrical power for a limited period and then gradually break down after the device has completed its task.
This creates an important engineering trade-off.
The battery must remain protected long enough to function reliably, but it must also eventually allow fluids to reach its components so that degradation can begin.
Designing the correct timing between these two stages is one of the central challenges of the technology.
The term bioresorbable refers to materials that can break down into products that the body may subsequently process. It should not be confused with the idea that the battery is edible, nutritional or food-grade.
How MIT’s Bioresorbable Batteries Work
The experimental batteries use a magnesium-based anode, a molybdenum trioxide cathode and a gel electrolyte.
MIT researchers demonstrated the technology in two main formats.
One version is a small disc measuring approximately 7.5 millimetres across, while another is a rectangular design measuring about 24 millimetres in length.
According to the study, the batteries achieved a peak open-circuit voltage of 1.84 volts.
Open-circuit voltage refers to the voltage measured when no device is drawing electrical current from the battery. It should therefore not be interpreted as the constant voltage available under every operating condition.
For a practical medical device, voltage alone is not sufficient.
The battery must also provide enough current to operate the required electronics and retain enough usable capacity to complete the intended task.
Different medical applications may also require very different power profiles.
A device that sends a short wireless signal, for example, may consume electricity differently from a capsule delivering repeated electrical stimulation over several hours or days.
Testing complete devices is therefore essential for understanding whether the battery can support realistic medical applications.
Wireless Communication Could Support Medication Tracking
One of the experimental demonstrations involved powering an RFID, or radio-frequency identification, tag.
During animal testing, a tag positioned in the oesophagus was able to communicate with a receiver located approximately 1.5 metres away.
The experiment builds on earlier MIT research known as SAFARI, published in January 2026.
That earlier work explored a passive RFID capsule designed to help identify when medication had been ingested.
The SAFARI system used a temporary protective layer that prevented the RFID tag from communicating until the capsule entered the digestive system and the protective material began to break down.
The concept was intended to help distinguish between medication that had actually been swallowed and a pill that was simply located near the external reader.
The original SAFARI system relied on energy supplied by an external RFID reader.
The addition of a battery introduces another possibility: allowing an ingestible device to actively support communication from inside the body.
For future medication-monitoring systems, however, practical performance would depend on whether signals can be detected consistently during ordinary daily activity.
There is also an important clinical distinction between confirming that a medication capsule has been swallowed and demonstrating that the medicine has been absorbed or has produced its intended therapeutic effect.
Each of these questions requires different forms of measurement.
A Stomach-Stimulation Capsule Tests a Therapeutic Application
The researchers also used the battery in an ingestible capsule designed to deliver electrical stimulation to the stomach.
The concept builds on MIT research first reported in 2023, when researchers developed a capsule that used electrical stimulation to influence the release of ghrelin, a hormone associated with hunger signalling.
That earlier system addressed another engineering challenge inside the stomach.
The stomach lining is covered by fluid, which can make it difficult for electrodes to maintain effective contact with tissue.
Researchers designed the capsule with a textured surface that helped move fluid away from the electrodes, improving their ability to deliver stimulation.
In the latest battery-powered experiments, MIT reported that the device produced an increase in ghrelin following approximately 20 minutes of electrical stimulation in animals.
Researchers also demonstrated continuous electrical stimulation lasting up to three days using a single battery.
These findings are significant because they connect the battery’s electrical performance with a measurable biological response.
However, the results should not be interpreted as evidence that the device can already treat appetite loss or other medical conditions in humans.
Moving from a measurable change in hormone levels to an effective treatment would require additional evidence regarding clinical outcomes, appropriate dosing, safety and consistency across patients.
Operating Time and Breakdown Time Are Not the Same
One of the most important aspects of bioresorbable medical technology is distinguishing between how long a device works and how long it takes to break down.
These are separate measures.
A battery may stop providing useful electrical power before its physical structure has fully degraded.
The researchers conducted dissolution testing that included accelerated experiments at temperatures of 75°C.
Some tests began at approximately body temperature before being moved to the higher-temperature environment.
These accelerated laboratory conditions can help researchers study degradation more quickly, but they cannot be treated as a direct prediction of exactly how long the battery would take to dissolve inside a human body.
Animal passage experiments provide another perspective.
Researchers observed the capsules becoming softer, fragmenting and disassembling over a period of approximately one to two weeks.
However, observing structural breakdown is different from demonstrating that every material within the device has been completely absorbed by the body.
When evaluating bioresorbable devices, three questions therefore need to remain separate:
- How long does the device operate? This determines whether it can successfully complete its monitoring or stimulation task.
- How long does the physical structure remain intact? This shows whether the device maintains its form while operating and then begins to break apart as intended.
- What happens to the components afterwards? This determines whether individual materials are absorbed, cleared by the body or naturally excreted.
The current prototype also has an important limitation.
The printed circuit board used in the stomach-stimulation capsule was not biodegradable and was naturally excreted during the animal studies.
As a result, the experiment should not be interpreted as a completely dissolving electronic system.
What Still Needs Testing Before Human Use
The research demonstrates a promising engineering concept, but several important questions remain before this type of battery could become part of a widely used medical device.
The researchers identified issues including storage stability, manufacturing consistency and performance under more varied digestive conditions.
The animal experiments involved relatively small groups of fasted pigs.
Future studies would need to determine how the system performs under conditions that more closely represent everyday life, including changing stomach acidity and the presence of food.
The finished medical device must also be assessed as a complete system rather than as a collection of individual materials.
Medical-device biocompatibility evaluations consider the final manufactured device, including its materials, coatings, electronics and, where relevant, sterilisation processes.
This means that demonstrating the suitability of an individual battery component is not enough.
The battery must operate safely and reliably when integrated with the complete device.
MIT has also reported plans for a future clinical trial involving the SAFARI system, with researchers previously indicating an expected start approximately two years after the announcement.
That remains a development goal rather than confirmation that human trials of the new battery technology have already begun.
What the Research Could Mean for Medical Technology
The broader opportunity behind this research is the development of temporary electronic medical devices that function for a defined period and then leave less persistent hardware behind.
Such systems could potentially support applications including medication tracking, internal sensing, electrical stimulation and other forms of short-term monitoring or treatment.
For manufacturers, however, commercial success will depend on more than whether the battery can degrade.
The technology would need to demonstrate reliable manufacturing, suitable storage life, consistent electrical performance and dependable operation across a wide range of physiological conditions.
Healthcare providers would also need evidence that devices powered by these batteries offer meaningful advantages to patients.
Environmental benefits would similarly need to be evaluated across the complete product life cycle.
A degradable battery may reduce some forms of persistent material, but the overall environmental impact would also depend on the manufacturing process, packaging and any electronic components that remain after use.
The next phase of development will therefore depend on reliable performance under more representative conditions and, eventually, evidence from human studies.
For patients, the long-term value of the technology would lie in creating medical devices that perform useful functions inside the body for exactly as long as needed, while reducing the amount of material that must remain behind afterwards.
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