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Pharma Tech Outlook | Tuesday, June 28, 2022
Medical technology has seen a significant volume of patent applications over the past 20 years, from AI-founded monitors to implantable devices.
The medical industry has recently seen an explosion of innovative technologies remodeling many health and medicine aspects. From AI-founded monitors to implantable devices, medical technology (or “MedTech” as it is usually known) has seen a significant volume of patent applications over the past 20 years.
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The industry exhibits no sign of slowing down either — with recent innovations helping address several challenges such as an aging population and long-term disease management.
Advancing PCBs
Progressively, we are seeing the capabilities of new medical technologies push the limits of the design and manufacturing process. As devices and equipment turn smaller and smaller — while incorporating increased functionality — so must their electronic components.
Thanks to technological advancements, it is now possible to make printed circuit boards (PCBs) that are far smaller, denser, and much more reliable and powerful than was previously possible.
Some discrete components are fading from external surfaces altogether and being placed into internal layers instead — making recovery of significant areas of the exterior surfaces possible. This is particularly prevalent with resistors, which are now laminated onto different inner layers using specialized materials in many high-density designs.
Today, we are also seeing PCBs used increasingly in internal medical devices — such as pacemakers, sophisticated neuroprosthetics, and gastrointestinal system tracking devices — implanted or ingested. For instance, pill-sized PCB cameras made up of an image sensor, aperture, and a lens can be mounted onto the board. Patients can then swallow these components to allow digital images and video footage to be taken off the digestive tract.
When designing and developing these boards, special focus must be paid to reliability as a malfunction could be critical to patient health. Frequently, PCBs must also meet strict standards for sanitation — particularly those used for implants.
Diverse additive steps such as copper plating, surface metalization, and ink application can help produce a reliable and repeatable board. In addition, by shortening the circuit paths, embedded components can often enhance the performance of high-speed circuits in PCBs.
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Soft electronics
To help miniaturize medical technologies even further, we are also beginning to see a trend for flexible electronics. These next-generation components are essential for creating complicated devices that can fit into small physical spaces — like those deployed within the human body.
Most devices can flexibly patter metals and semiconductors into bendable structures or through malleable materials like conducting polymers. Transistors and integrated circuits can also be created from threads and combined with thread-based sensors to develop flexible, multiplexed devices. These “soft electronics” can then be knitted into the fabric, worn on the skin, or (in theory) implanted surgically into the skin, heart, or brain tissue.
Technologies of the future
Thanks to recent electronic improvements, we will likely see technologies within the medical sector continue to extend our lifespans. Even so, robotic prosthetic limbs are already in use, and mechanical organs, such as an artificial pancreas that automatically administers drugs to control diabetes, are currently being developed.
Over time, EC Electronics has worked with many clients in the medical industry to give completely assembled boxed electronics products for use in various applications. The broadening array of technologies available due to advancements in these electronics will certainly lead to new ways of detecting and understanding diseases, raising the odds of successful treatment or cure.
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