Medical Electronics

The first in a series of Imec essays on the future of electronics technology looks at health.

Kaia Health, the two year old health app start-up, raises $10m in funding

Imec and other CARDIS project partners have developed a prototype medical device based on silicon photonics for the screening of arterial stiffness and for the diagnosis of cardiovascular diseases such as arterial stenosis and heart failure. A clinical feasibility study with 100 patients has been successfully completed by INSERM at the Georges Pompidou European Hospital in Paris, France. Cardiovascular disease ...

The ATM600 series of 600W ac-dc switch-mode power supplies from Luso Electronics are convection-cooled and intended for both medical and industrial environments. Approved to IEC62368-1, the supplies offer 2 x MOPP protection, and are also certified to EN60601-1 (3.1). Efficiency is up to 95% and a leakage current is <1mA. Four variants are available, all working from 100-240Vac, and have ...

Using only resources built into a phone, University of Washington researchers have developed an app that uses inaudible sonar to monitor someone’s breathing rate, and can deduce when drug overdose has stopped breathing. Called Second Chance, it is claimed to detects opioid overdose-related symptoms ~90% of the time, and can track someone’s breathing from up to ~1m away. “Here we ...

Specific molecules can be detected with unprecedented sensitivity using plasmonics and nano-particles – “100 times more sensitive than current similar sensors”, according to the University of Bath. At the heart of the sensor is an array of gold discs  – the nano-particles – deposited on a transparent substrate. A laser (~760nm) is used to excite ‘surface lattice resonances’ (SLRs) amongst ...

To support medical device manufacture, Staffordshire EMS firm AWS has qualified its quality management system to ISO 13485:2016. The recently revised standard places greater emphasis on risk management and risk-based decision making, in addition to changes related to the increased regulatory requirements for organisations in the supply chain, according to the company. “We strive to ensure our accreditations are up ...

Artificial intelligence can recognise congestive heart failure non-invasively via by a cloud-connected phone, briging diagnosis into the home, according to a research team from Nanyang Technological University and Tan Tock Seng Hospital, both of Singapore. One in five people worldwide, according to Nanyang, run the risk of developing congestive heart failure – and this increases with age. There is no cure, and ...

Seeking a fast route to stretchable circuits with integrated electronics for on-skin use, a team from Portrugal and the US have developed a technique that avoids clean rooms and photo lithography. Instead, the required conductive pattern is printed onto temporary tattoo paper with an ordinary desktop laser printer. Next, a silver pasted is rubbed onto the print, where it adheres ...

Photonics has been called one of the fastest developing areas in healthcare.