Medical electronics to the embedded systems market opportunities and challenges (1)

As the Chinese Government health care reform began, national health care awareness grows, CCID consulting forecasts for the next three years, the Chinese portable medical electronics market CAGR of more than 30 percent of their market size from 80 billion in 2006 to 2011 of the rapid expansion of 280 billion.

Faced with a huge market opportunity, domestic medical e-industry enterprises are facing many challenges: strong foreign medical electronics giant in China layout has been completed, the lack of domestic medical e entry threshold, there is no relevant standards and certification, medical biosensor, core technology, the lack of security and risk management. Then, the domestic electronics enterprises that do?

I participated in the April 2009 held in Shenzhen China International Medical Electronics Assembly, the Conference attracted industry, academia, research on behalf of the parties, particularly of concern from Intel, TI, ADI, Xilinx, Actel, Microsoft, Wind River and EVOC intelligent technology for embedded systems, electronic component supplier, system developers and software experts very neatly to the scene, from architecture, reliability, specific medical product development to local medical electronics manufacturers advice, help them seize the opportunities, challenges, explore medical electronics market, this financial crisis is rare under real, visible medical electronics is embedded system vendors currently widespread applications.

Recently, Xu Juyan in embedded systems Association integrated circuits at the Forum pointed out that because the ultimate human needs is to improve the quality of life, especially all of humanity has entered an era of elderly, medical electronics is important. He hoped that the integrated circuits and embedded system enterprise concern in this sector.

Portable medical electronics is the starting point

Portable medical products and medical information products is embedded system manufacturers cut medical electronics market highlights.

CCID consulting in China International Medical Electronics Assembly noted, in addition to domestic MINDRAY native medical device manufacturers are also very low, even including foreign manufacturers also far freight not occupying the majority share of the market, 48% of the market also to open up the domestic medical e-production enterprise opportunity many, see figure one; after 20 years of development, the domestic application of embedded system has reached a considerable level and scale, especially in consumer electronics and computer information products, such as our mobile phones, media players, GPS, Internet, computer and household electric appliances products of mass production brought in purchasing Semiconductor components, processing, and other benefits. For example, mobile phone (particularly large screen), allows handheld industrial measurement instrument takes 3-5-inch high resolution touch screen for easy and cheap, this is often before adopting monochrome character and grayscale screen; then there are 32-bit ARM MCU widespread use, especially for Cortex M3, represented by high-performance, low-power-generation ARM-based MCU, let, embedded operating system, standard peripherals (like USB, CAN, Ethernet, ... ) Portable embedded systems become more standardized, miniature and energy-saving technology. Of course, the traditional embedded system chip manufacturers, with their biological sensors, power management and MCU/DSP consolidation edge in the field of medical electronic still obvious advantages, such as TI MSP430-based company's blood glucose meter and the Oximeter.

Figure a Chinese portable medical electronics market-leading manufacturers

China's household and medical portable products in the market at an early stage, since the national universal health consciousness, inexpensive household portable medical products, sales, subject to the financial crisis is very small.

These products are mainly of representatives are electronic sphygmomanometer, portable blood glucose meter and an electronic hearing aids, medical portable main representative product is multi-parameter monitor, ultrasonic equipment and fetal, infant and maternal monitors, accumulation of domestic e-business in the many years of experience in embedded system access on the basis of the product development and design should be possible.

Secondly medical information of products, such as the Shanghai Institute of biomedical engineering, introduction of vital signs monitoring wireless service platform.

Platform's core is a measuring instrument for multi-parameter signs (iCare), GSM module and the network, intelligent analysis software and server, you can deploy at Community and hospital, so that a similar system for the application of domestic has succeeded in industrial control, as long as the number of parameters measuring instrument design perfect physical signs, the difficulty of establishing and implementing the system is not great; such as, Intel Corporation introduces the Mobile Clinical Assistant (Mobile Clinical Assistant) is shown in Figure 2, in fact the core of this device is Intel High-performance, low-power mobile and portable system, you can very conveniently arranged in hospital wards, patients, family and doctors of the clinic, professional medical instrument factory House of custom and production, the unit is fully consistent with the medical seal, disinfection and security requirements. Domestic embedded system enterprises should have the ability to design a similar device, but if adopts domestic ARM SoC programme that size can be smaller, cheaper prices, low power consumption also.

Figure 2 Mobile Clinical Assistant