State-of-the-art semiconductors enabling the new digitalized, ultra-connected healthcare ecosystem

Some two million medical devices are used by medics and healthcare professionals in many different settings. Ventilators, scanners, pumps, and countless other appliances support the monitoring, screening, diagnosis, and treatment of patients. And the trend is upward. The market for medical electronics is currently expanding at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10 percent worldwide. This is partly being driven by the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has intensified the demand for ventilation and diagnostic equipment.

Digital transformation is extending the reach of many of these devices beyond clinical settings. In other words, IoT-connected smart devices are facilitating medical treatment, preventing illness, and aiding healthcare from the patient’s own home. Smart thermometers and connected inhalers, for instance, are ‘connecting healthcare’, giving carers access to a much bigger dataset as patients go about their daily lives. This gives physicians better insights into symptoms and the progression of chronic and acute illnesses so they can develop improved care and therapy plans. Demand for telehealth devices supporting remote patient monitoring and bridging delays in routine appointments/interventions has been accentuated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

At the same time, today’s health- and lifestyle-conscious consumer is much more focused on prevention and maintenance rather than treatment. People want to be in tune with their day-to-day fitness and health. Hence demand is surging for wearable health technology such as medical wristbands and smart watches with health tracking features such as blood oxygen saturation monitors, sleep trackers, ECG sensors, and heart health monitors.

The benefits of improved health awareness, monitoring, and care are compelling – but they must not come at the expense of privacy and data security. In both clinical and private settings, device and data security are thus of paramount importance. The same applies to electronic health cards. While they promise greater convenience and an improved patient experience, e-health cards must ensure that personal medical records do not fall into the wrong hands.

In addition, medical wearables must combine seamless connectivity and longer battery lifetimes with small form factors, ease of integration, and sensor accuracy. This is particularly important for elderly people so the device can differentiate between normal movements and a fall.

Our extensive offering includes solutions tailored to all medical and healthcare device designs – from ICU equipment and ventilators in particular through wearables to electronic health cards.

Our SLE 78 controller family, for instance, was designed specifically to meet all e-health card requirements, combining Integrity Guard security technology with future-proof storage capabilities extending over 10 years.

For devices such as medical ventilators, our extensive offering is designed to the highest quality standards based on safety-certified development processes. Our portfolio covers everything from our CoolMOS™, OptiMOS™, and CoolSET™ power supply and management devices through XENSIV™ sensors to OPTIGA™ Trust authentication and secured connectivity solutions. Particularly valuable in times of a pandemic, our extensive production capabilities support the rapid ramp-up of both in-house and partner frontend and backend facilities.

On the wearables front, we cover all functional building blocks from RF, sensor, and connectivity to power, memory, and security – all in compact form factors offering ease of integration and rapid design-in.

Our inhaler offering, for instance, bundles our high-performance PSoC™ microcontrollers and XENSIV™ pressure sensors with AIROC™ Bluetooth®/Wi-Fi combos and OPTIGA™  Trust authentication solutions to bring smart, secure connectivity to today’s inhalers. Our XENSIV™ sensors are also increasingly resonating with hearing aid manufacturers, with our latest XENSIV™ IM73A135 solution setting a new performance benchmark for MEMS microphones.