Contributing Editor, MEMS Investor Journal
The first wave of MEMS was automotive and the killer app was airbag triggers. The second wave of MEMS was consumer electronics and portrait-to-landscape auto-switching was the killer app. Now the third wave of MEMS has begun, according to STMicroelectronics (NYSE: STM), namely medical applications of MEMS, with the killer app likely to be point-of-care diagnostics.
"We have a strong focus on developing and manufacturing wireless sensor networks for diagnostics and other applications in medicine," said Benedetto Vigna, General Manager of STMicroelectronics’ MEMS, Sensors and High Performance Analog division. "By working with healthcare experts, we can combine two different disciplines and know-how, along with our manufacturing infrastructure, to improve the health and wellbeing of people all over the world."
STMicro is collaborating with medical applications experts hoping to ride the crest of the third wave of MEMS commercialization in search of the killer medical app. Its first foray resulted in a tiny insulin-delivery pump that it designed in collaboration with Debiotech S.A. (Lausanne, Switzerland). Called the "nanopump," it has reduced a belt-pack sized device to a disposable patch that provides the same function -- sensing blood-sugar levels and then dispensing insulin as needed. The nanopump was a awarded the Swiss Technology Award for its innovation.
More recent medical MEMS kill-app candidates include a Mayo Clinic project to craft a remote heart monitor, an EU funded project to create a wireless body sensor for the elderly called SensAction AAL, for sensing and action in ambient assisted living, which tracks and transmits their activity using STMicro's Motion Bee wireless sensor subsystem.
STMicro is also collaborating with Sensimed AG (Lausanne, Switzerland) on a smart MEMS contact lens with an embedded pressure sensor and antenna that wirelessly transmits intraocular pressure inside the eye, which can be a symptom of glaucoma. Called the Sensimed Triggerfish, the smart contact lens will be rolled out country-by-country across Europe starting in the third quarter of 2010, and to the U.S. market by 2011.
Copyright 2010 MEMS Investor Journal
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