News & Analysis
Comment
Baolt
No matter how much forecast we talk about, medical electronic will take place in ...
eewiz
I think the whole point of medical electronics is to lower the healthcare costs. ...
Medical electronics a focus for ISSCC '11
Rick Merritt
11/22/2010 1:13 AM EST
SAN JOSE – Medical electronics will be front and center at this year's International Solid State Circuits Conference which has chosen the 2011 theme of Electronics for Healthy Living.
Keynoters from Medtronic and Imec will drive that theme home. ISSCC will also host at paper and panel sessions dedicated to medical devices. The focus comes as a lively debate rages over whether technology will fuel or mitigate rising health care costs.
New medical implant technologies hold promise for better health care, but they must be integrated into a system that has the right interfaces, information flow and energy management, according to keynoter Stephen Oesterle, a senior vice president at Medtronic. Oesterle will trace the evolution of implants from pacemakers to devices that treat neurological disorders and a future artificial pancreas.
Jo de Boeck, a senior vice president at the Imec research institute in Belgium, will share the vision of wearable wireless electronics that report on health for a range of medical and wellness applications. He will describe a future multisensory smart patch that can acquire and process data for better decision making. Imec has prototyped such devices in its labs.
To enable that vision, researchers from Korea will report on a wireless transceiver for body area networks that consumes just 0.24 nanojoules per bit. Academics from the University of Washington in Seattle will describe a 0.5mm2 glucose sensor that can be wirelessly powered and is suitable for integration in a contact lens.
An evening session will review standards, security and technology issues surrounding body area networks. Presenters include senior engineers from GE, Texas Instruments, Toumaz Technology and Samsung.
|
|
|
|
|
kinnar
11/22/2010 6:58 AM EST
This is a very good effort to promote researches and development in Medical Electronics, and it is really required for affordable medical services throughout the world.
Sign in to Reply
goafrit
11/22/2010 1:15 PM EST
ISSCC is what matters. There is no other conference that matters than ISSCC. I am happy to read this effort to drive attention in this area.
Sign in to Reply
elctrnx_lyf
11/22/2010 9:30 AM EST
Recently there is lot of focus on the medical electronics. This conference is giving a big seat again. I think the industry leaders like medtronic, ge will take the opprtunity to address the challenges of technology changes for medical device designs. Particularly the medical products require relaible, long life technologies. Now a days the medical diagnostics are changing dramtically with the entry of wireless technologies. The medical industry leaders might request the semiconductor industry to listen to their needs and provide stable and advanced solutions for long term.
Sign in to Reply
iniewski
11/22/2010 11:21 AM EST
Sure, medical devices are hot but how much business is really there? I know everyone in the world can use an electronic gadget to monitor their health, have an implant or deliver some medications in-situ...but how is going to pay for all that technology??? healthcare is already taking the largest share of the GDP...are people willing to pay for these devices from their own pocket? Kris
Sign in to Reply
eewiz
11/23/2010 2:34 PM EST
I think the whole point of medical electronics is to lower the healthcare costs. If you can proactively monitor your health then the overall medical expenses will be much lower due to fast response. Ofcourse its not easy to convince people to pay and may be difficult to convince the insurance companies to reimburse.
Sign in to Reply
daleste
11/22/2010 2:04 PM EST
Medical does seem to be the next growth engine for semiconductors. I don't know how much of it is new inventions versus the next generation of existing devices. I would hope that there would be some effort to reduce the cost of the devices to help with the cost of medical care, but I doubt their is much emphasis in that direction.
Sign in to Reply
rick.merritt
11/22/2010 8:43 PM EST
Actually medical electronics overall is forecast to grow about 8 percent so nice and steady but not exactly the next big engine driving semiconductors
Sign in to Reply
jimcondon
11/23/2010 12:53 PM EST
Rick,
What is included in the 8 percent? It seems like the home health industry could really grow to support more home testing and monitoring to reduce the number of in house visits required. I thought it was being positioned as one of the fasting growing segments.
Do you have any pointers to the forecasts in the segment?
Jim
Sign in to Reply
iniewski
11/22/2010 8:53 PM EST
Rick, I am not surpised at 8%, the market growth is limited by budgetary constraints in healthcare...plus this market segment has really long cycle to final sale, as long as 10-years can happen with FDA and other regulatory approvals...in a consumer space it can be as short as 1-year, and this is where the next semi driven needs to come from not from medical, no matter how cool some technologies might look like...Kris
Sign in to Reply
Baolt
11/26/2010 8:03 PM EST
No matter how much forecast we talk about, medical electronic will take place in our houses sooner or later. GE&intel teamed up about it, philips, samsung are in game, even gossips about sony. For routine tests, check outs, we already have lots of equipment on the market for clinics. Just some guys should came up with solution for implementation and descending problems. Oh medical MEMS should also grow inline which is on process. At finland many hospitals have home care system which is having all medical checks, monitoring done by remote systems, connected with application running on smart phones of D.s. Doctors can check-out, give advice 7/24 even there is setting for emergency cases to get alert by the system which is done only with defining thresholds values of patient. People are living happily with tiny gadgets around in very confortable space of their own home. isnt it great to have?
i am really looking forward isscc for initiative.
Sign in to Reply