I have been honored with an invitation to present at the Fourth IEEE CASS Summer School on Wearable and Implantable Biomedical Circuits and Systems in Bogotá, Colombia (July 9 – 12, 2013).
I will be giving two 1 hour and 20 minute talks on “A Practical Perspective on Developing Novel Commercial Active Implantable Medical Devices”. Unlike other commercial devices, developing medical implantable devices takes place in a heavily regulated environment which requires decisive proof of the devices’ safety and efficacy. Costs, schedules, and clinical strategies must be planned accordingly to achieve a successful exit. This two-part lecture will focus on the practical technical and business-oriented aspects of planning and executing the development of implantable medical devices intended for a commercial application.
Other great lectures at this event that I look forward to attend are:
Analog processing of surface recorded electrophysiological signals
Wouter Serdijn – Deft University of Technology
This lecture covers the following topics:
Surface recorded electrophysiological signals
· Application: wearable and implantable medical devices
· ExG signal source modeling
· ExG readout system
· Filtering and amplification
· Analog-to-digital conversion
· Signal-specific ADC
Circuits and systems for wearable and implantable medical devices
Wouter Serdijn – Deft University of Technology
In the design process of wearable and implantable medical devices (IMDs), such as hearing instruments, pacemakers, cochlear implants and neurostimulators, the tradeoff between performance and power consumption is a delicate balancing act. In this presentation I will cover techniques to deal with the acquisition and generation of electrophysiological signals and to provide reliable communication through the body. We will discuss signal-specific analog-to-digital converters, morphological filters, arbitrary-waveform neurostimulators, energy harvesting and ultra wideband wireless communication from a low-power circuits and system perspective. Design examples and their performance will be discussed in detail.
Sharing experiences in the software development process for medical devices
Cristina Cornes – CCC
Software development in the field of medical devices is strongly ruled by regulation. The lecture aims to present the characteristics of this process, showing the quality requirements that apply to the design control procedure and the different roles that engineers may take in this process. Focus shall be done on compliance with standards IEC/ISO 62304 – Medical device software – Software life cycle processes and ISO 14971 – Medical devices – Application of risk management to medical devices.
Practical examples will be used to illustrate the topics.
Finally we shall comment about the dynamics of audits performed by regulatory bodies on the product design control procedure.
Low voltage low power analog circuit design techniques
Wouter Serdijn – Deft University of Technology
This lecture covers the following topics:
• Transistor modeling: CMOS, BJT
• Low-power design principles
• What if Ohm cannot help you any longer?
• Design example
Wireless Power Transfer for Medical Implants and Body Sensor Networks
Mingui Sun – University of Pittsburgh
Although recent technological advances have produced numerous implantable medical devices, these devices must have a power supply. A battery is not a good option since replacing it requires a surgery. Two novel approaches are studied to deliver power wirelessly into the body. The first approach uses the volume conduction property of biological tissue as a natural “cable”. A flexible epidermal sheet delivers energy into the body mimicking the mechanisms of an electric fish. In the second approach, the wireless electricity is utilized based on strongly coupled mid-range resonance with a much higher efficiency than the traditional magnetic induction method
Wearable Computer with a Sensor Array for Evaluation of Wellness, Lifestyle and Personal Health
Mingui Sun – University of Pittsburgh
It has been well recognized that lifestyle, including diet, physical activity, living environment, social interaction, etc., plays an essential role in human health. In recent years, unhealthy lifestyle has been adopted by an increasing portion of the human population, which has led to a steady rise of chronic diseases, such as obesity, cardiovascular disease, cancer, lung disease, and diabetes. Although the link between lifestyle and health has been well established, there is no objective method to evaluate personal lifestyle except direct observation. Currently, self-reporting has been the primary tool for lifestyle assessment which depends on the memory and willingness of individuals to report their personal data and experience. This subjective method is thus unreliable and inaccurate. There is a strong need to develop an objective tool to evaluate lifestyle in people’s daily lives.
With a research grant from the National Institutes of Health in the United States, we have developed a wearable computer called eButton for objective evaluation of personal lifestyle. eButton has a similar size to that of a common chest button, and its weight is only about one quarter of a smart phone. The face of eButton is covered by a removable sticker which can be designed personally. Despite its simple and personalized appearance, eButton is a complex miniature computer with a powerful CPU and massive data storage. It is also equipped with an array of sensors, such as a wide-angle video camera, a light sensor, a motion sensor (accelerometer), an orientation sensor (gyroscope), and a global positioning system (GPS) receiver. eButton is designed to document almost every event in front of the wearer, and record body movement, orientation, geographic location, light level, and time.
We have developed advanced multimedia data processing algorithms to process the massive amounts of data acquired by eButton, including food identification, portion size measurement, calories and nutrient calculation, human face recognition, physical activity identification, and calorie expenditure estimation. The processed data are represented by a novel electronic summary, allowing a researcher, a physician, or the eButton wearer to examine data quickly, selectively and accurately. We have also used eButton to categorize daily events (e.g., sedentary activity such as screen times), and provide information about social interaction and living environment. We have conducted a series of experiments on human subjects in their daily lives and demonstrated the high performance of this new device.
Sensores químicos inalámbricos: Integración de sistemas de telemetría inductiva.
Fredy Segura – Universidad de los Andes
La charla contempla el estudio de dos tipos de sensores en el campo de los microsistemas operados de manera inalámbrica. Uno es el estudio de sensores pasivos y el otro de sensores activos. Los sensores pasivos consisten en una estructura simple, que no requiere alimentación electrónica directa y que pueden reflejar parte de la energía que se le transmite a cierta distancia. Los sensores activos, además de tener el sensor tienen circuitos electrónicos de acondicionamiento y comunicaciones con la unidad de lectura. En ambos casos se utiliza alimentación remota por medio de un acoplamiento inductivo. Se hará un mayor énfasis en el estudio de aplicaciones para sensores pasivos en las cuales actualmente venimos trabajando: Sensor de presión intraocupar y sensor para la detección de bajas concentraciones de metanol. Ambos basados en el principio de resonadores pasivos tipo LC. Se estudiarán las ecuaciones, cálculo de parámetros, geometrías hasta llegar a la implementación de los sensores que actualmente tenemos.
Going Low Power
Victor Grimblatt – Synopsys
Mobile devices have becoming part of our life. Over a trillion smartphones have been sold last year in the world. Hundreds of applications are used by each person in their mobile on a daily basis. Smartphone users don’t want to be forced to charge their devices often, they want to use it and have an “infinite battery”. For that reason, designers and EDA people have been working during the last years to come out with a low power design methodology that is currently used by almost all designers around the world. This talk will present the impact on energy of wireless and wired devices. It will also present the power components that are dissipated by any electronic chip and/or device. The talk will present the different techniques that are used today by chip designers to reduce power and will conclude with future trends and challenges on low power design.