SOC-promote innovation in portable medical devices (1)

Portable medical equipment are improving available to millions of patients with medical standards.

Blood glucose meters, heart rate monitor, stomach angiography (GI), painless implantation and many other devices for acute and chronic disease patients bring the Gospel of life. Portable automatic defibrillator can be in urgent cases save patients ' lives. Movement table can automatically record the user's heart rate, automatic measuring distance, the calculation of the number of steps and the maximum realization of oxygen-increasing effect of movement. Future more innovative products for medical, will greatly enhance the efficiency of health care.

Virtually all these portable products requires a low-power microcontroller gets from the consumer or the operator's command, provide information and status updates.

Because almost all products are running on battery, you should focus on extending the battery life. These products to the requirements of the battery life, generally two to ten years to replace the battery. In addition, these products are subject to space restrictions usually requires a highly integrated analog component signal placed in appropriate conditions and converted to digital form, these signals are processed and converted.

Portable medical equipment to the needs of micro-controller to semiconductor company challenges.

Design often features, specifications and trade-offs between spatial limitations, but in the field of portable medical care is difficult to make these trade-offs. Portable medical market requirements are often contradictory: require both compact and multi-functional, asking; both require high-performance analog and require low power consumption; both require high processing capabilities, and requirements for long battery life. These products need to have an analog-digital converter (ADC), adjustable gain, power management systems and LCD monitors.

This article discusses medical electronics market in a number of innovative products, medical equipment industry in general trends, and how to apply SOC microcontrollers improve future devices.

Innovation

Thanks to the ultra low-power, highly integrated micro controller, can reduce pain, improve patient care and quality of life of new products in large quantities in the market.

Advanced Neuromodulation Systems company is St.

Jude Medical's a subsidiary, the company is a manufacturer of Eon Spinal Cord Stimulator is a treatment for chronic pain of the Implantable devices (Figure 1). It works by implantation of the device will be mild electrical pulse is sent to the spinal cord near the transmission area, when the electrical impulses through the nervous system into the brain, cloaking or interrupt pain and replaced by a comfortable feeling, called "sensory abnormalities."

Figure 1.

Eon spinal cord stimulation systems has been approved for the treatment of chronic pain of the trunk and limbs and failed back surgery syndrome (FBSS) professional equipment. Its working principle is: the implantable device will moderate electrical pulse is sent to the spinal cord near the transmission area, when the electrical impulses when incoming brains to interrupt pain signals.

Recently launched another more interesting device is a smart pill (Figure 2).

Its working principle is: patients swallowing it down, you can monitor the gastrointestinal tract. When the smart pill through the gastrointestinal tract, the data is automatically transferred to the portable data collector. The gastrointestinal tract with traditional data collection methods, its side effects compared to smaller, more convenient. This device miniaturization and battery life with very high requirements.

Smart pills that gastrointestinal monitoring system, including RFID, ZigBee and 802.15.4 and other proprietary protocol for low-power wireless protocol enables medical areas of innovation to a new level.

In addition to the design of products to the patients, many companies have recently published an agreement based on wireless asset tracking system that tracks the hospital equipment and personnel.

Integrated

Has onboard microcontroller SOC provides integration level that benefit from a portable medical equipment.

If you do not have a high level of integration provides a small space for additional capacity, it is impossible to produce so many small portable products.