Medical Electronics
Building better batteries for healthier lives
By Sebastien Musq, product manager, Murata M
edical device technology is evolving rapidly. This evolution is being driven by growing medical need and enabled by rapidly improving
low-power electronics, better sensors, more efficient mechatronics, flexible software, and increasingly ubiquitous communications technologies. The combination of these facilities has already enabled us to gather vast amounts of health data from very large cohorts of patients, analyse it to find patterns and trends, and then encapsulate those trends in algorithms for use in medical devices. As an example, when Apple wanted to understand the utility of its smartwatch in detecting atrial fibrillation, it was able to recruit a cohort of more than 400,000 people to take part in its research study.
The rise of smartphones has also created a platform for medical device innovation, as well as an expectation that health management can be much more convenient. For example, having an ultrasound used to involve going to the hospital; now a specialist can come to you with a handheld wand to do the sensing and a mobile phone to display the results. Smartwatches are steadily absorbing health- monitoring functions, starting with pulse-rate and blood oxygen monitoring and recently adding single-lead ECGs and temperature sensing, with ambitions to eventually measure blood pressure from variations in blood flow. People with diabetes are benefiting from continuous monitoring of their glucose levels, using a very discreet sensor applied to the skin and a cell phone for data analysis and presentation.
There are many other medical-device technologies already on the market, such as electronic thermometers, hearing aids, pain relief systems, insulin pumps, medical alert systems, and pill dispensers. Over the next five to ten years, we can expect to see more complex wearable health monitors, smart inhalers that track medication usage, smart pills that can sense and report the
14 May 2024
environment within the body, and more sophisticated telehealth solutions to bring medical diagnostics and health consultations into the home. This combination of improving
technology and rising demand makes medical technology a valuable and highly innovative market, according to MedTech Europe, the European trade association for the medical technology industries. Its 2022 Facts and Figures market report says that the European medical technology market is worth $150bn, and that Europe accounts for 27.3 per cent of the global market for medical devices, based upon manufacturers’ pricing. This makes Europe the second largest medical device market in the world, after the US. Big export markets for European medical devices include the US, China, and Japan.
The medical device sector is also one of the most innovative in the world. According to MedTech Europe’s analysis of the European Patent Office’s Patent Index, more than 15,300 applications were made for medical technology patents in 2021. This makes medical technology the second most innovative sector in Europe, as measured by number of patent applications, second only to the digital communications sector, and ahead of computer technology, electrical machinery, transport, measurement, and even pharmaceuticals and biotechnology. Further emphasising the sector’s innovativeness, the Facts and Figures report estimates that medical technology products have a lifecycle of just 18 to 24 months before an upgrade is introduced.
Powering medical innovation If we accept that medical devices are going to become increasingly complex, demanding more onboard signal-processing, machine- learning and general computing power, as well as more sophisticated mechatronic systems, then we obviously need higher-performance
Components in Electronics
batteries to drive them. We also need batteries that can meet the strict safety requirements imposed upon the market by regulators worldwide and guarantees of manufacturing quality and product traceability. Murata, the innovator of mercury-free technology for silver-oxide batteries since 2005, has developed a range of mercury-free silver-oxide batteries for medical devices to service these evolving needs. They are all made by Murata at its facilities in Japan. And they’re designed to deliver the kind of performance that medical devices need,
Figure 1
including high energy storage density and the ability to produce short pulses of high currents when needed, for example, to drive mechatronic devices.
Murata’s SR927R silver-oxide button cell is one in a family of batteries that offer higher energy densities than many other cells in the same form factor. They can also deliver higher currents at times of peak demand and sustain their output voltages at more useful levels for longer than standard parts in an equivalent form factor.
The SR927R cell is a nominal 1.55V, 45mAh battery with some useful capabilities that medical device designers can exploit. The
Figure 2
www.cieonline.co.uk
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