MIT researchers pursue ultra low power chip for medical apps
1 min read
Engineers from MIT's Microsystems Technology Laboratory (MTL) are working on tiny, low power chips that could diagnose heart problems, monitor patients with Parkinson's disease or predict seizures in epileptic patients, according to MIT News.
Such wearable or implantable devices could transform the way medicine is practiced and help cut the costs of expensive diagnostic tests. Dennis Buss, former vp of silicon technology development at Texas Instruments and a visiting scientist at MIT, said: "Microelectronics has the potential to reduce the cost of health care in the same way it reduced the costs of computing in the 1980s and communications in the 1990s."
The key to developing small wearable and implantable medical monitors is an ultra low power chip for interfacing to biomedical sensors, signal processing, energy processing and communications, developed by the research group of MTL Director Anantha Chandrakasan. Researchers at MTL hope to use that chip as the core of a device that can monitor a range of vital signs — heart rate, breathing rate, blood pressure, pulse oxygenation and temperature.
A potential applications is cardiac monitoring and, as a first step, MIT researchers have developed an L shaped heart monitor, pictured, measuring about 4in on each side. The monitor, which is worn on the skin, can store up to two weeks of data in flash memory and draws 2mW of power. Eventually, the researchers hope to build chips that can harvest energy from the body of the person wearing the device, eliminating the need for a battery.
