Differential design of home medical electronic equipment
The aging of the global population and the surge in medical costs have driven a huge market demand for home healthcare solutions. As smaller, cheaper portable home care technology replaces large and expensive equipment, the number of healthcare products on the market continues to increase, and the development of semiconductor technology has promoted the popularity of home healthcare and reduced costs.
This number is very alarming. According to statistics from the World Health Organization (WHO), the number of people over 50 years of age in 2006 was 650 million, and this number is expected to reach 1.2 billion by 2025. In the United States alone, the proportion of people over the age of 65 in the population is rising and is expected to continue to rise in the future.
The healthcare market is very large. According to the US government, the US has spent US $ 2.5 trillion in healthcare, accounting for 18% of the country ’s GDP. ABI Research predicts that 59 million wearable home healthcare devices will be put into use by 2014, when the total number of wearable devices will reach 420 million, including sports and fitness equipment.
Freedonia Group believes that the current market value of home healthcare equipment has exceeded US $ 7 billion, and the technologies involved include respiratory therapy, intravenous (IV) injection, dialysis, patient monitoring, wheelchairs, walking aids, medical equipment, and safety equipment.
Today's medical equipment can provide patients with a lower cost and safer way of monitoring. In some cases, they can even handle their health conditions in their own homes, reducing the need to go to a hospital, clinic, or doctor's office. Healthcare is becoming more and more decentralized.
Portable home healthcare equipment includes blood glucose meters, sphygmomanometers, heart rate monitors, digital thermometers, pulse oximeters, asthma meters for the treatment of asthma and other respiratory diseases, fall and motion detection equipment for the elderly and disabled, and Digital scales for weight monitoring and management, as well as equipment for treating sleep apnea. Many home fitness equipment has also increased health measurement and management functions through upgrades.
Semiconductor technology for medical equipment Driven by the Internet connection, the performance and integration of semiconductor ICs have been greatly improved, which in turn drives innovation in home healthcare equipment. Interestingly, the development of these semiconductor ICs has saved thousands of lives and made many people live longer, which has further increased the requirements for healthcare and increased the demand for more medical innovations.
Designers can take full advantage of the functions of sensors, microcontroller units (MCUs), microprocessors, DSPs, analog front ends, memories, power ICs, and transmitters and receivers. FPGA can also achieve many functions. These solutions can achieve a high degree of functional integration.
Many IC functions are driving home healthcare trends, especially processors and advanced sensors. For example, DSP has high computing power and can be used to implement a new generation of monitoring products.
Advanced accelerometers, such as the ADXL345 iMEMS three-axis digital accelerometer from Analog Devices, are widely used in millions of game consoles, navigation devices, cellular phones, automotive applications, and other consumer products. These accelerometers ensure the accuracy of digital sphygmomanometers for home use. They can detect and ensure the correct position of the arm relative to the patient's heart during measurement, thereby achieving maximum measurement accuracy.
The pulse oximeter is one of the devices recently added to the home healthcare monitoring camp, and blood oxygen saturation is the fifth important sign after blood pressure, heart rate, respiration rate, and body temperature. An oximeter can be used to measure the oxygen content carried by hemoglobin. Hemoglobin is an important part of red blood cells and is used to export oxygen from the lungs to tissues throughout the body.
The pulse oximeter (Figure 1) can be designed using many traditional ICs, ON Semiconductor said. ON Semiconductor acquired AMI Semiconductor, a leading manufacturer of advanced custom ICs, three years ago. Some semiconductor IC manufacturers can provide the complete signal chain functionality required for home healthcare applications.
Figure 1: Pulse oximeters can be designed using traditional ICs. ON Semiconductor provides ICs in the brown block diagram for pulse oximeter solutions.
"The AD5933 impedance analysis chip we developed can be used to measure parameters such as body fat and blood coagulation, and the output can be linked to a home healthcare terminal that communicates with a doctor." Paul Errico, Global Strategic Marketing Manager, ADI ’s Healthcare Division, said, "This It's just one of the ICs we need to provide a complete signal chain (Figure 2) in portable home healthcare products. "
Figure 2: The main functional blocks of the signal chain in portable home healthcare products.
"We are developing solutions that can meet the needs of current and future home healthcare applications. This includes not only the data measurement part of the signal chain, but also the connection between home patients and their medical service providers.
Design Challenges The home healthcare device market presents design engineers with many difficult challenges, including low power consumption and longer battery life, robust and powerful data processing capabilities, more friendly and simple user operations, wireless connectivity, and End user costs. Semiconductor IC manufacturers are also increasingly facing these challenges.
Microchip Technology has adopted nanoWatt XLP ultra-low power technology in its PIC microcontrollers (Figure 5). This controller can be used in home healthcare equipment such as blood glucose meters. Microchip's PIC16, 18, and 24F microcontrollers consume only 100nA in power-off mode, and integrate an 800nA watchdog timer, real-time clock, and calendar circuit.
Figure 5: The home blood glucose meter circuit requires an ultra-low power microcontroller, such as Microchip's nanoWatt XLP PIC microcontroller.
Some companies use flash memory microcontroller units optimized for low power consumption to implement handheld home healthcare devices, such as blood glucose monitors. NEC Electronics ’16-bit all-flash MCU is based on the company ’s 78kOR CPU core and operates from 3.3V to 5V. This MCU integrates an LCD driver, 12-bit analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters (ADC and DAC), op amp, and voltage reference. In standby mode, the current consumption of this MCU is only 1.2μA.
"We have been in the blood glucose meter business since the early 1990s, so we understand the low power requirements of this medical device very well." NEC's chief technical marketing engineer Michael Clodfelter said, "Some MCU manufacturers promote nA-level low power The consumption of standby mode index is too lethal. In fact, about 1μA in standby mode can ensure that the blood glucose meter has a long enough battery life.
Clodfelter also found a trend to use 32-bit MCUs in portable medical home devices to provide higher accuracy. In fact, NEC offers a 32-bit all-flash V850ES (Figure 6), which consumes only 90mW / Dhrystone when used in blood glucose meters. When the clock frequency is between 5MHz and 20MHz, the pipeline architecture of this microcontroller can execute up to 43 Dhhrystone MIPS (1.1).
Figure 6: NEC provides 32-bit all-flash V850ES
Breath monitoring Portable tester for breath monitoring is one of the health care products that have recently entered the home. Some of the more well-known respiratory diseases include chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), asthma, and sleep apnea. More than 300 million people worldwide suffer from asthma.
KarmelSonix has launched an asthma instrument for asthma patients. This personal asthma assessment device uses ADI's 400MHz BF524 Blackfin DSP, which is a hand-held device placed in the patient's throat. The piezoelectric sensor first captures irregular data of air flow from the patient's breath and feeds it to the DSP. The processor then determines the patient's breathing rate, which is defined as the duration of the breathing cycle occupied by wheezing. KarmelSonix said that wheezing rate is a dynamic and important parameter for asthma attacks.
KarmelSonix's patented software algorithm applies strict criteria to judge the emergence of wheezing. The company revealed that these standards were determined by guidelines provided by computer-processed respiratory sound analysis (CORSA).
"Asthma meters can also bring convenience outside the home. This portable device can be placed in a personal backpack. The output data of the asthma meter can be downloaded from any place to the doctor or medical provider through the USB port on the laptop "Tony Zarola, Strategic Marketing Manager at Analog Devices, said," We are expected to use Blackfin DSPs via USB ports in EKG wireless surveillance equipment. "
In order to promote the development of portable home medical care equipment, TI provides a development kit based on TMS320VC5505 DSP. According to TI, these kits can accelerate time-to-market to 8 months. Each kit contains hardware and software design tools, including schematics, sample code, medical special algorithms, and other indirect support.
Royal Philips Electronics (Royal Philips Electronics) provides intelligent sleep apnea treatment systems for the field of home healthcare. This Reprionics sleep therapy system is about the size of a clock radio (7x5.5x4 inches) and can provide treatment options for patients with moderate to severe sleep apnea. This system is designed using the principle of positive airway pressure developed by Philips and provides a gentle flow of compressed air through a mask to keep the patient's airway open.
"This is by far the most complex product we provide for sleep apnea therapy. It is available when the patient's coordination problem is the most prominent." Said Donald Spence, CEO of Philips Home Healthcare Solutions.
Philips also provides Trilogy 100 portable home life support ventilation equipment for adults and children. This design can help nurses and clinicians to look after patients at home and in well-conditioned care centers.
In addition, Philips is also promoting the display terminal of the home healthcare platform. This device can easily realize remote patient management through the TV or Internet at the patient's home. This is exactly what the company's MoTIva interactive platform provides. In addition to monitoring important physical signs, this device can also provide educational information and motivational messages, and can be used for health-related measurements.
Intel recently announced that it is testing the Health Guide, a PC for medical information monitoring and communication. This PC can monitor the vital signs of elderly patients with chronic diseases and provide details to remote medical providers through the network.
Intel and GE are both heavyweight members of the ConTInua Health Alliance. Recently the two companies have joined forces to tackle healthcare issues for home and assisted life devices. The Continua Health Alliance was established in 2006 to address the lifestyle, health, and demographic trends that have led to the rapid rise in healthcare costs.
The Continua Health Alliance is comprised of leading healthcare providers, insurance companies, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, semiconductor IC companies, and manufacturers of sporting goods and medical equipment. The organization is committed to the standardization of wireless and wired communication protocols and has helped many IC and medical equipment providers to actively participate in the portable home healthcare monitoring equipment market.
Interoperability Interoperability is an important goal of home healthcare equipment. Medical equipment and IC organizations recognize that in order to prosper the home healthcare equipment market, these equipment must be cost-effective and safe, and be able to communicate quickly with each other or with other patient information resources.
Continua Health Alliance recently selected 2.4GHz Bluetooth Low Energy and ANT Healthcare Protocol as the second version of its Interoperability Design Guidelines. Due to the popularity of Bluetooth low energy in mobile phones, Bluetooth low energy may become the standard configuration of home healthcare equipment. On the other hand, such as ANT Wireless, a branch of Dynastream Innovations, ANT Wireless. ANT is an ultra-low-power wireless 2.4GHz protocol that is mainly used in healthcare and fitness monitoring applications. ANT Wireless said that nodes using the ANT protocol can continue to work with button batteries for several years, compared to other batteries that can last for months. ANT is specially designed for reliable and flexible data communication, which can effectively resist crosstalk.
For designer engineers and medical design OEMs, interference-free medical monitoring is an important issue. Medical monitors and transceivers must be designed to emit signals with low energy levels and must not interfere with other signals in the surrounding area. Wireless and wired transmission must meet the strict safety and reliability requirements of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In addition, the data sent must meet the strict privacy requirements of patients and medical providers.
Nordic Semiconductor uses the ANT protocol in its nRF24AP2 wireless transceiver. Recently, the company began to provide samples of nRF8001 ultra-low power Bluetooth 4.0 BLE chip (Figure 7).
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ABI Research expects to deliver more than 2.5 billion Bluetooth low energy chipsets by 2014, and this market will have a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 78%. The development of this chipset will reflect two different implementations of Bluetooth low energy, namely dual-mode and single-mode, of which the first implementation will be a single-mode chip.
Human body wearable network The work done by Continua Health Alliance has actively promoted the development of human body wearable wireless sensor networks. These networks are also known as human body area networks (BAN) and personal area networks (PAN). These networks use low-cost, very low-power, interoperable, and interference-free wireless sensors to connect to real-time displays such as watches, and then connect to computers at home. Medical information will eventually be sent from these computers to medical equipment providers via the Internet or even wirelessly.
"Wireless monitoring will allow healthcare professionals to maintain a high degree of vigilance for the elderly, while at the same time allowing these elderly people to stay at home as long as possible. This method can greatly reduce costs and make patients feel more happy." Nordic Alf Helge Omre, business development manager of the semiconductor company, said.
At the IMEC Holsts Center in Lueven, Belgium, scientists are developing a BAN for wake-up monitoring, which measures the human's emotional state by measuring four human physiological parameters. The development of this BAN is part of the Human ++ project of the center, which uses many sensors, and these sensors are all tied in a bandage tied to the whole body.
The detected human body data is sent wirelessly to the PC as a base station for further analysis by doctors or others in the medical and gaming fields. Scientists at IMEC believe that this solution can bring high value to various applications in the entertainment and medical fields.
Various hardware and software embedded in daily necessities such as clothes and bedding and used to monitor and remind the symptoms of heart disease patients are part of the EU's € 14 million HeartCycle project. Although this system of networked sensors and monitors will not replace face-to-face communication between patients and doctors, it does reduce the need for such face-to-face communication. The above-mentioned system can detect and remotely monitor small changes in heart movement, and make these changes processed in a timely manner before they become more serious.
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