There are four major trends in the current medical electronics arena – security, portability, connectivity, and low power consumption.
Safety includes two aspects. First, the quality and safety of medical equipment will have a negative impact on people's health. Second, it refers to the security of data in medical equipment. Due to the special nature of medical equipment directly related to human health, the quality of the equipment must be prioritized when developing a new product.
The popularity of interconnected technologies and product miniaturization can significantly reduce the transportation and time costs of patients and hospitals, improve the efficiency of diagnosis and treatment, and make better use of the limited resources of medical institutions, thus better protecting people's lives and health. Therefore, the portability and interconnection of medical equipment has become an inevitable trend, and mobile medical care has begun to enter a stage of explosive development.
For medical devices, especially portable devices, lower power consumption means higher energy efficiency and longer life. The pursuit of low power consumption is an inevitable trend of medical electronics and one of the important technical goals of all medical electronics related companies.
In response to the above, the magazine interviewed some well-known domestic and foreign enterprises and industry experts to discuss the current status and future of medical electronics.
The local strength of the portable field is getting strongerIn recent years, China's portable medical electronics market has developed rapidly due to the growth of demand. From 2007 to 2010, the market growth rate remained above 23%. In particular, in 2010, the size of China's portable medical electronics market reached 20.87 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 28.5%. Among them, household portable medical electronic products occupy the majority of the overall market with absolute leading edge. In 2010, with the gradual implementation of medical reform, the growth rate and growth rate of medical portable electronic products have surpassed home medical electronic products, thus becoming an important driving force for the overall market development. In 2010, China's medical portable medical electronic equipment achieved sales of 7.19 billion yuan, with a market share of 34.4%.
With the improvement of Chinese residents' health awareness and the increasing medical expenditure capacity, the huge population of the Chinese market has further released the demand for household portable medical electronic products. Due to the consumer characteristics of household portable products, users have higher brand viscosities, and foreign manufacturers represented by Omron, Johnson & Johnson, Siemens, and Roche have leading advantages in this market. However, it should not be overlooked that Shenzhen Mindray has occupied more than 30% market share in China's medical portable medical electronics market with its leading edge in multi-parameter monitors and portable ultrasonic diagnostic instruments. Under its good demonstration role, more and more local manufacturers are gradually establishing their market position under the support of their own R&D strength, continuous improvement of product performance and good channel and geographical advantages. In addition, with the rise of the rural market, the competitive advantage of local companies whose products cost-effectively meet the needs of this market segment is more prominent.
Figure 1 China's portable medical electronics market scale and growth from 2007 to 2010
Finding the right position is the way outIn order for medical device manufacturers to enter the market and maintain long-term growth and thus increase market share, there are usually two aspects to be aware of: one is to have core technology, and the other is to have good marketing strategies and marketing channels. Both must keep pace with the times and constantly innovate. As China's small and medium-sized medical equipment suppliers advance their technology, they will compete with leading domestic equipment suppliers to gain more global market share from foreign competitors. At the same time, medical device manufacturers need to improve their market forward-looking judgments and be able to invest early and reserve early. For local companies, if they enter this market and fail to grasp the potential market and properly position their products, it will be difficult to be in an invincible position in the market.
The growth rate of China's medical electronics has been much higher than the world average. In the future, it will continue to maintain rapid growth, and relevant medical policies and the increasingly valued personal/home medical market will continue to drive the development of the entire industry. New medical device manufacturers will also emerge, one of the driving forces is the technological advancement of some emerging medical electronic applications and the hard demand of the market. Of course, compared with multinational giants, Chinese local companies still have a long way to go, including technology reserves and enhancements, brand building and market expansion. At present, local medical device manufacturers have gradually developed products in the middle and high-end direction, such as high-end color ultrasound, multi-layer CT and high-end monitoring products. We have all seen local brands that are close to the industry's highest level of technology and product performance. But these successes are by no means the result of blindly emulating technology, but these companies can find their own technological advantages and characteristics, and develop products with technical and performance competitive advantages for specific market segments. Especially for the low-end market, innovation in technology, product positioning and market strategy is also crucial, and a single low cost is no longer the only magic weapon to win the market.
Increasing performance and portability requirementsMedical electronics require an extremely high resolution analog-to-digital converter (ADC). These devices must have very low noise—reflected by their signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and total harmonic distortion (THD) specifications. Moreover, medical professionals also want to quickly obtain test results and improve the portability of medical instruments, which requires such ADCs to have higher speed, smaller package and significantly lower power consumption. For example, the LTC2379-18 is an example of this new ADC, an 18-bit resolution, 1.6Msps, low-power ADC. The device achieves 101dB SNR and -120dB THD while consuming only 18mW of power.
Of course, achieving such high performance in the instrument is difficult because of the amplifier limitations used to connect the sensor to the ADC. To make the overall design easier, Linear Technology has developed an innovative technology called Digital Gain Compression (DGC). This function is used to convert the zero scale code from 0V to 0.1 • VREF and to convert the full scale code from VREF to 0.9 • VREF. For a typical 5V reference, the input range will be 0.5V to 4.5V, which provides enough room to power the driver amplifier from a single 5 V supply. The DGC feature allows the ADC to generate all codes including zero scale and full scale. These designs address some of the inherent problems of traditional high-resolution SAR ADC signal links, reducing power consumption while reducing the output swing requirements for ADC driver amplifiers.
Innovation and obstacles of local medical equipment manufacturersMedical electronics is a complex and fragmented market. While there is tremendous growth and innovation potential in this area, the increasing global challenges in funding, regulation and supply chain optimization have continued to curb the market.
Despite the problems and the relatively late entry of the Chinese market into this industry, new growth has emerged as national health awareness has increased. According to forecasts, in the next five years, the world medical electronics market will grow at an average annual rate of 9%, and will reach 243.2 billion US dollars by 2016, while the development and growth of the Chinese market will double, and the compound annual growth rate will reach 15%. %.
The key factors for Chinese medical electronics manufacturers to enter the high-end medical device market are technological innovations (such as medical imaging equipment) and highly reliable product design.
In general, from a hardware perspective, Chinese medical electronics manufacturers should continue to strive for further miniaturization (small form factor), low power consumption (thus extending battery life), portability, wireless capabilities, reliability, customization and personalization. . In terms of software and services, there are two key points: First, it is imperative to deal with the security challenges that arise; secondly, solving security problems can establish a clear competitive advantage.
Unsurprisingly, due to the special safety requirements of medical devices, regulations and compliance have hampered many technological innovations in the medical electronics industry. Nonetheless, medical device manufacturers should focus on risk management to create safe and effective medical devices for the market. Reliable risk management methods, tools and training to eliminate risk in product design, development and safety to reduce risk are critical to the market acceptance of equipment. Software and service providers need to invest in process and compliance to help alleviate problems for medical device manufacturers – which means having a reliable software development process and providing traceability and processing for the software products they provide Product. In short, to become a trusted vendor in the healthcare industry, strict compliance with government regulations and consistent compliance must be maintained.
Improve safety and reliabilityFor medical electronics, there are no more important indicators than safety and reliability.
TI recently introduced a new Hercules secure MCU platform for medical applications. The platform uses dual ARM Cortex-R4F core "dual-core lockstep" technology to reduce errors by cycle-by-cycle CPU data comparison. On the one hand, it can eliminate errors generated inside the MCU, and on the other hand, it can eliminate external interference. Random error. The Hercules platform also uses Error Code Correct (ECC), which automatically detects data errors in memory and improves data reliability. Hercules can use hardware to implement protection functions, improve performance and reliability, reduce security investment in software development, reduce development costs, shorten development time, and further reduce program CPU usage and improve operational efficiency. Hercules provides development tools, software, and support services to help developers get things done quickly, streamline the development process, and accelerate the security certification process.
A win-win situation for interconnectivity and securityAt present, the global medical electronics market has totaled more than 110 billion US dollars, of which medical imaging equipment, diagnostic equipment and therapeutic equipment each account for about 30 billion US dollars, and biotechnology equipment is about 20 billion US dollars. In the medical market, whether it is the international market or the Chinese market, there are many participating companies at various levels, such as equipment manufacturers, system providers, and hardware providers. The competition is fierce, and there are many non-medical companies that are eager to see. Admission. Therefore, in the short term, in order to break through from the medical electronics market, it is necessary to find excellent partners, especially in the medical industry. Only by strengthening high-level cooperation and bringing high-quality terminal products to the market faster and better can we gain a foothold in the medical market and establish a superior brand image and become a leader in the industry.
Typical mobile medical services mainly consist of three parts: measuring equipment, computing equipment and remote equipment. The measuring device is mainly responsible for the collection of medical data. The obtained data is transmitted to various intermediate computing PCs, mobile phones, tablet computers and other computing devices through various interconnection channels, such as ZigBee, Bluetooth, USB, WiFi, Ethernet, etc. It is then transmitted by the computing device to remote devices such as servers and data centers for analysis, diagnosis, organization, and archiving. Through the data transfer of these three links, the entire medical process from the patient to the doctor and back to the patient can be realized. In this regard, Wind River will launch its new Android platform solution next year.
As interconnectivity increases, data security issues become more prominent. According to McAfee, various security threats are growing at several times a year over the past decade. Therefore, ensuring the safety of equipment has become the primary standard in the field of medical electronics. Organizations in various regions of the world, such as FDA, IEEE, and ConTInua have established their own medical equipment safety standards. The high standards required, so that about 96% of new equipment can not be listed due to failure to meet the standard. In order to achieve both connectivity and security, Wind River actively cooperates with various underlying IC design vendors for medical electronics, and has launched solutions such as the AtlanTIs Platform platform to ensure security from the bottom. In these scenarios, Wind River uses isolation technology – including temporal isolation and spatial isolation. Time isolation is physical isolation, so that the tasks to be processed are separated in timing, do not overlap, to ensure security; spatial isolation is system isolation, by virtualizing multiple system environments, such as using data in the processing part of the security is higher VxWorks, while using the more powerful Linux when dealing with the communications part. When one of the cores (such as Linux handling communication) crashes, it can be restarted separately without affecting the work of other cores to ensure that different kinds of tasks are isolated from each other and not affect each other, thus ensuring security.
Security is the biggest challengeNew technologies have a huge impact on determining what products a medical device manufacturer will offer to customers in the next few years. However, it is well known that the medical device industry has strict regulations and is regulated by relevant institutions and laws and regulations. As a result, the medical device industry tends to be conservative in adopting new technologies. Before new technologies are put on the market, they must undergo extremely rigorous and sufficient verification to prove their safety.
QNX's microkernel architecture can be combined with new adaptive partitioning technologies that help all safety-critical and non-safety-critical components run on the same processor core. QNX's adaptive partitioning ensures that critical processes do not take up a lot of CPU space while optimizing CPU utilization. As a result, non-safety critical components of medical devices, including those built with SOUP (Unknown Source Software), can be changed without compromising safety and safety critical component certification.
Actively responding to wirelessThe wireless tide of medical electronic devices has reduced the number of I/Os in medical devices to a certain extent, but in fact most medical devices, especially large devices, still use wired connections, especially core components. There has not been much change compared to the past.
Key factors that medical device designers must consider to ensure the safety, performance, and reliability of each product include: product operating environment, interconnect sealing, biocompatibility, intuitive operation, sterilization-resistant environment, and long life. Compared with wireless, wired mode still has many obvious advantages: whether it is technology or market, wired mode is more mature and stable than wireless; wired mode has stronger anti-interference ability, and can better meet the reliability of medical electronics. High requirements.
For a long time, Molex has a number of products for medical electronics, whether it is diagnostic monitoring equipment or therapeutic care equipment, Molex provides a comprehensive interconnection solution from connectors to membrane switches. Currently, Molex is working on the development of fiber laser technology to provide higher speed, better performance and better quality for medical equipment.
ConclusionAs people's demands for health care are getting higher and higher, the market demand for the quantity and quality of medical equipment is getting higher and higher, and medical electronics is gradually extending from the professional specialization to the consumer home. As a long-term public welfare undertaking, the medical technology demand for medical electronics is also long-lasting. The future medical electronics will continue to move toward more reliable, more convenient and more efficient. There are four major trends in the current medical electronics arena – security, portability, connectivity, and low power consumption.
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