Analyze current and future trends in medical electronics

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The main trends driving the medical electronics market are the aging of the global population, the increasing cost of health care, and the need for medical diagnosis and treatment in remote and emerging areas or homes. In the next few years, different world economies will continue to promote trends in these and other areas. Therefore, some of the major issues facing current medical electronics vendors include portability and miniaturization, connectivity, security, data security and quality, and reliability.

Power management

In the next decade, an important development trend is that portable medical electronic devices will emerge in large numbers. Making power management decisions early in the design process will help with system-level trade-offs, which may be necessary to meet portability and runtime goals. In contrast, small portable medical products may use disposable batteries, while large systems take advantage of the chemistry and battery pack size of various rechargeable batteries. Features such as Dynamic Power Path Management (DPPM) allow the system to draw energy independently from the battery charging path. In this way, when a device equipped with a fully discharged battery is inserted, it can function immediately without waiting for the battery to be fully charged. This can serve as a life saving in an emergency.

Since the battery voltage does not drop in a linear manner, the true life of the battery cannot be known using voltage tracking alone. In particular, there is a case where the voltage in the middle third of the voltage range requires 60%-70% of the discharge cycle time. The coulomb count does not compensate for battery aging, so it overstates the battery state over time. However, impedance tracking technology allows medical devices to calculate the remaining run time over the life of the battery with an error of less than 1%. This is typically accomplished by integrating voltage conversion to extract a single cell voltage and charge/discharge current. Other protection features in portable power solutions include battery overvoltage, undervoltage, overcurrent, and short-circuit protection.


In the medical electronics arena, system reliability is critical, so battery certification is a key requirement. In some battery management products, single-wire, two-way communication systems can be used to link 96-bit device IDs, 16-bit seeds unique to each device, and 16-bit cyclic redundancy check (CRC) codes that vary from device to device to provide security. performance. This is an effective way to verify that the battery currently in use meets OEM requirements. Using an improper battery pack not only affects system uptime, but it can also damage the system and even cause personal injury. Proper power management methods can make products more portable and economical by increasing battery life and safety.

Miniaturization and integration

Ultrasound is a market segment in the field of medical imaging and has experienced a high level of innovation in the field of portable devices. Today's advanced portable or handheld ultrasound systems from manufacturers require highly integrated, scalable solutions that enable medical professionals to break through lab or office limitations and connect to customers in remote locations or in emergencies around the world.

Integration will continue to drive the trend of portability and cost savings, and the field of ultrasound imaging is a good example. While maximizing memory usage and power savings, embedded processors play a vital role in balancing the computing power, flexibility, battery life and system size of medical imaging devices. For example, today's high-performance DSPs are powerful enough to perform background digital processing in ultrasound systems. At the same time, the programmability of the DSP enables it to implement the latest software algorithms without changing the system hardware. Thanks to the high system integration of the DSP SoC, OEM development teams can not only improve system performance, but also reduce time-to-market. By combining DSP processing, general purpose control, dedicated peripherals, and optimal image and video compression, these SoCs offer a cost-effective, low-power, single-package solution. This allows developers to save board space and shorten design time, and encourages them to focus more on developing featured products.

In addition to the continuous integration of embedded processing technologies that enable ultrasound portability, integrating analog signal chains is also critical. At the analog receive end of the signal chain, a single integrated analog front end (AFE) can replace discrete multi-channel LNA, VCA, PGA, low-pass filters, and high-speed ADC functions to provide LVDS data output. By reducing the number of components in the system, the integrated AFE can reduce power consumption by up to 20%, reduce the noise figure by 40%, and save 40% of board space. This greatly saves system cost. The integrated AFE delivers different levels of image performance for all sizes of ultrasound systems from handheld devices to high-end devices.

Connectivity and remote patient monitoring

For most patient monitoring systems, data integrity, system flexibility, and mobility are all critical factors. Through interfaces such as Ethernet and wireless, hospitals can connect all the devices in the entire organization, even to the patient's home. The interface currently in use allows the caregiver to remotely connect to the patient through a wireless body sensor network worn by the patient. This allows you to take advantage of the hospital's intranet or connect to the patient's home security system or cell phone. The system is connected to an Ethernet or call center to continuously monitor without interfering with the patient. It is said that the Continua Health Alliance may adopt Bluetooth technology, and other wireless interfaces such as ZigBee are also expected to be used in consumer medical devices and portable patient monitoring equipment.

When choosing a wireless interface, power consumption, data rate, and data range are three key factors to consider (see Figure 2). Taking ZigBee as an example, the protocol can be used globally; data rate and duty cycle are moderate; support for wireless mesh networks, allowing multiple sensors in the same system. The range of Bluetooth and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) protocols is limited, but the data rate is higher. BLE has lower power consumption on the sensor side, allowing the use of smaller batteries than traditional Bluetooth.

Finally, the solution choice must fit within the system's power budget and meet data transfer requirements.


Data security

Medical data security is another major requirement and focus of attention. The US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) defines federal standards and is supported by various technical security measures. These standards contain specific privacy and security guidelines. Such guidelines prohibit the transmission of data over open networks and the downloading of data on public computers, as well as data encryption and access control. These security measures are globally applicable, so it is expected that more and more versatile hardware and software tools will emerge soon to support the health of medical data that has been in place for the next decade.

For example, several IEEE 802.15.4 compliant RF transceivers designed for low-power, low-voltage portable applications provide hardware MAC security operations for data encryption and authentication. Some of them also offer various encryption/decryption modes, such as counter mode (CTR) and CMC-MAC authentication and encryption. Of course, in order to take advantage of these security operations, the key must be determined and set up, usually leaving this work to the highest level of the communication protocol for processing. For example, the CC2530 is compatible with multiple network protocols, including IEEE 802.15.4, Zigbee, Zigbee RF4CE, Smart Energy, and IP protocols. The CC2530 also provides an Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) 128-bit encryption/decryption core at the government standard level. This core supports IEEE 802.15.4 MAC security, AES operations required by the ZigBee network layer and application layer to ensure greater security.

Given the federal standards for patient data transmission and how to protect this data, it is expected that more and more versatile hardware and software tools will soon be seen.


Quality and reliability

As the standards and government quality requirements in global institutions and the current legal environment become more stringent, the focus of medical device companies is constantly changing. Today, quality and reliability considerations are important when designing semiconductor products for medical OEMs, and both are well-known industry thresholds. By incorporating an enhanced product (EP) stream into the catalog process, it not only extends the life of the product, but also clearly defines and improves the change control process. In order to meet the needs of dedicated and controlled production lines in the medical market, it is necessary to effectively eliminate changes between facilities and expand qualification practices, while improving product traceability or strengthening the rigor of production testing of consumer electronics. By providing an alternative to upscreening, enhanced product streams can also save manufacturers money and reduce time-to-market, which is commonplace in high-reliability markets. Another way to solve the above problem is to use part of ISO13485, which is applicable to all medical devices when applied to the semiconductor industry.

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