laboratory just north of Chicago.

The future of medical monitoring is quietly taking shape, think flexible electronic monitors the size of a Band-Aid and tiny pacemakers that dissolve harmlessly in the body when they're no longer needed.

The work of query.

Simpson instituted by electronics at Northwestern University at times seems almost miraculous.

What makes such breakthrough is possible is a new generation of flexible.

And yes, at times does a lovable electronics.

Pioneered by Professor John Rogers, Chicago tonight, producer poking recently visited with Rodgers and his team to learn the secrets of the lab's success.

>> I've always been interested in how you can connect sort of fundamental scientific research to technologies that have a broader societal impact.

actually got my career started laboratories.

And so that was where the transistor was invented.

The solar cell.

So I think it was probably the world's most successful basic science lab.

In the sense that 10 Nobel prizes of come as a result of the work that was done there.

>> as longtime collaborator and colleague Tony Banks explains what makes for a just different what attracted me to start working with him is because his mindset was, you know, hey, we want to make these great gadgets way to make these great things.

But >> not for the sake of making them.

We want to make a difference in society.

>> Bedded one such invention is the lapse creation of Small's like School Health launches first developed by Russia's team.

Feed you some premature babies in Lurie, Children's Hospital that technology has since evolved to help babies and pregnant mothers halfway across the globe program managers from the Gates Foundation and the Save the Children Organization proactively reached out to us and ask whether we could adopt those technologies for deployment into resource constrained areas of the glove.

>> That became really an interesting engineering challenge.

How do you go from what we originally developed as a single use, purely skin like device.

>> To something that could be used in Zambia where the device would have to be reused 1000 cycles in order to amortize the cost of the device.

>> Russia sent his team took less than 12 months to come up with an answer So the next version of the device that we developed for deployment in the lower middle income countries little bit thicker more like a Band-Aid rather than temporary tattoo.

>> But as battery power on board, it also uses communications standards that are compatible.

Smartphones.

It's already in these countries.

Had they have smart phones.

We just use that as the monitor to reduce costs.

This was put through FDA approval is part of a small start-up company in the Chicagoland area that that we launched as a result of this opportunity brought to us by the Gates Foundation version that's deployed currently has a little bit different form factor a little bit larger battery, but it's designed to separate to a greater extent.

The electrodes we get a stronger electrocardiogram signal and it sort of wraps around the chest of of the infant in in this way.

>> While the raw, some unique materials used to make them on buses.

We're just says many of the base component a different what you might find this month.

>> So the fact that these devices are reusable and wirelessly rechargeable with no external ports that could be contaminated with bio foods and things like that that can be cleaned.

You could just dump them in and Al Qa Hall that Bath, for example, that that's been the real focus is reuse to hundreds of cycle.

So you don't even worry about the cost of the device in a tour of the labs that Banks explains how you can rapidly develop and then involves new devices.

And we design build, make all our own electronics.

A lot of the >> electronics like The small flexible device you can see here that stretches and molds in the can conform to the human body.

Along with several other devices that you can see here that a lot of these postdocs are working on.

And so this is the first step in the process of making those devices.

Once you do the design, then this is the prototyping, the stage where you start building the devices.

One recent invention is the development of a tiny pacemaker babies.

>> The once implanted ISIL Thomas Lee in the body when no longer required negating the need for additional surgery to extract the device.

This is the pacemaker.

It's about the size of it.

Point of reference.

Here sesame seed heroes like to put nearby this interfaces with the surface of the heart, it's self powered.

So sort of a battery capacity built into the device itself on this side that sort of cardiac tissue contacting side.

>> And on the other side is a photo activated switch that we can use to set the pacing rate implantable.

So getting through the FDA regulatory process will take some some years.

But this was just published in April.

So so Red brand brand new technology.

>> But while Russia's lab may already be creating cutting edge technology is for the benefit of all.

Well, just says his most important legacy will be his students.

>> We're talking about the longer arc of my career, the largest impact that I'm likely to have is all of the students who have passed through this group and then go on and start their own research groups and join companies and sort of