IC Technology in Medical Equipment: Applications and Trends

As medical technology advances, integrated circuit (IC) technology is playing an increasingly integral role in electronic medical devices. In particular, digital ICs have found many applications in electron medical equipment that relies on the collection, storage and transmission of electronic information. In the face of this growing market, digital ICs are becoming ever smarter, smaller and more functional.

Development of electronic medical equipment

Currently, IC technology is used in four categories of electronic medical field equipment: medical imaging equipment, medical instrument equipment, consumer medical equipment, and diagnostic and patient monitoring and treatment equipment. While IC technology has made this equipment smarter, smaller, more energy-efficient, and more accurate across all of these categories, it has had the greatest impact on consumer medical equipment.

Typically, medical devices aim to make healthcare more accurate, more effective, more accessible and more affordable. They also aim to make treatments and procedures safer and less invasive. These improvements require using less power in a smaller format, and securely delivering the signal to its destination. Sensors, analog-to-digital converters, radio frequency systems and microcontrollers play a key role in the process. The same applies to image and signal processing. Artificial intelligence is increasingly being added to these systems to make monitoring and diagnostic tasks easier, faster, and – hopefully – more reliable than human intelligence.
 

• Chip-enabled medical devices

Since professional clinical equipment requires extremely high-quality components, chips used in medical electronic devices are more accurate, more reliable and obviously more expensive than chips produced for consumer electronics. However, as our aging population requires more at-home medical services and a wider range of electronic medical devices such as wearable monitors, the line between consumer and medical electronics is gradually blurring.

IC technology can be divided into two categories: digital and analog IC. Both of these categories are widely used in medical equipment. Digital ICs are used in microprocessors, FPGAs, memory (RAM, ROM, and flash memory) and digital application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) and other components, to maximize circuit density. Analog ICs are used in operational amplifiers (OP), linear regulators, phase-locked loops, oscillators, and active filters, and impact the physical characteristics of semiconductor devices, such as gain, matching, power dissipation, and resistance. To achieve the critical fidelity of analog signal amplification and filtering, analog ICs typically use more active device area than digital IC designs and therefore have lower circuit densities.

Since almost all types of chips, including digital ICs and analog ICs, from MEMS to DSPs and FPGAs, are widely used in medical equipment, an increasing number of them have built-in security. ASIC technology has been widely used to meet the customization requirements of medical equipment, as it can be adapted to meet the exact needs of a particular system or function. For example, it is used in X-ray counting ICs for computed tomography (CT); hearing aids (digital ICs with µC, DSP, and audio engines; mixed-signal IC with functions for support of ADC, DAC, microphone IF, power supply, etc.); continuous temperature measurement with NFC readout (for patient monitoring, pregnancy control, and transportation of medical items, etc.); and blood analysis for conditions such as blood glucose and coagulation.

Field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are widely used in rapidly developing fields, including healthcare. Programmable FPGAs and systems-on-chips (SoCs) are also widely used in medical equipment and applications such as medical ultrasound, digital X-Rays, CT, MR, and PET scanners, as well as diagnostic, surgical and other clinical equipment.

Increasingly, three-dimensional integrated circuits (3D ICs) are being used in medical technology. 3D ICs integrate various processing, memory, radio frequency, sensors, and other functional blocks onto multiple stacked silicon wafers. All these components and functions are connected by some form of connector, such as through-silicon via (TSV). While these chips save space, their complexity poses challenges for design and integration. Consequently, the medical field continues to drive innovation in 3D IC technology, largely due to its challenging requirements in terms of external size, power, energy consumption, thermal energy, and electromagnetic effects. Although the overall market size is smaller than the consumer electronics market, as our population ages it is constantly expanding.
 

• Future outlook

Currently, electronic medical devices are used mainly in non-clinical areas such as research, the collection and maintenance of public health data, access to patient records, and patient care. However, as more devices are being used in monitoring, diagnosis, and surgical and non-surgical treatments such as neurotechnological drug delivery and nerve stimulation, the use of semiconductors in clinical medical equipment is increasing. They are also being used more frequently in monitoring systems, both in implantable clinical devices that are used in patients’ homes to transmit data back to physicians, and in monitoring services for obtaining vital signs from sensors on patients’ bodies.

Amazing advances in medical electronics are constantly improving the delivery of healthcare and patients’ quality of life. And it’s common knowledge that the coronavirus pandemic has further accelerated innovation in medical technology. With the help of digital ICs in medical equipment, our society is undoubtedly becoming healthier and healthier – and life is getting better and better!