Thanks for the feedback everyone. Do you have any ideas other than suction and the electromagnetic approach? Since it sounds like the electromagnetic approach is out. And so is suction per client requirements.

Electromagnetic will not work. A better candidate is electrostatic attraction.
Have you ever tried getting styrofoam peanuts off your body?

 

Hi,

I'm trying to create a medical device that is able to pull on skin without using suction or affixing anything to the skin.

My first thought is to use magnetism of some kind. More specifically, I'm wondering if it's possible to attach two electrodes to my skin, about an inch apart from one another, and somehow flow current between the two so that that length of skin builds up sufficient magnetic charge or a sufficient magnetic field to be attracted to a nearby magnet that's like an inch away. Then I can turn on and off the current, in order to cause my skin to be selectively pulled towards the magnet. I don't really know anything about magnetism, but is something like this even feasible? If so, what would the current signal have to look like (e.g., in terms of magnitude, frequency, etc.)?

Everything is electromagnetic. The problem is the quantity of energy required to create enough 'mass' next the skin to do what you want is, to put it mildly, quite large. Beyond what can be generated here on Earth.
Are there other options you can think of?

Thanks in advance!

 

Maybe, more elegant: in the last three weeks I was the subject of tens of ECGs.

The small pads for the electrodes when properly applied, they adhere quite well to the skin. When moving in the bed, I've have never find one failing to stay in place even if pulling hard from them.

Thanks for the suggestion! Unfortunately that would require affixing sticky pads to the skin that we want to tug on, and I'm not allowed to affix anything to that portion of skin.

Electromagnetic will not work. A better candidate is electrostatic attraction.
Have you ever tried getting styrofoam peanuts off your body?

Electrostatic attraction is interesting. I believe they use it in other contexts to attract skin to electrodes. How much voltage would you need to do something like that, though?