With the increasing aging population, public health awareness and the new medical reform policy, the portable / home medical electronics sudden emergence in recent years, growth is very impressive, it also led to the MCU and other chips.
Present in the home medical equipment, the main chip MCU, some of the interface chip and A / D conversion, and now there are some vendors in A / D and so integrated into the MCU. Home medical electronic equipment due to the complexity of the test equipment used on the hospital compared to a relatively simple, in some low-end products such as blood pressure, blood glucose meter, etc., the 8-bit MCU that is enough. But with the development of the market, there are several trends worth noting:
First, large storage capacity and processing power. In order to store more data, such as patient test data storage for more than a month, and now the global market also requires some relatively complex equipment, such as the United States and other family demands with ECG monitoring equipment, medical equipment, which requires higher performance, the need for graphical display capabilities, storage capacity, wireless connectivity, which requires greater processing power MCU, higher parallel processing capabilities, as well as highly integrated, fast accurate computing power, 8-bit MCU will be 16, 32 bit MCU replacement. Before MCU and discrete graphics chip is the GPU, but with the size of home medical equipment requires more compact design, integration is also a future trend.
Second, low power consumption. Of home medical equipment, power consumption is very high. Such as nurses with medical equipment to home visits, may one day need to visit a lot of home users, which requires medical equipment to maintain the battery at least one day of battery life with this high demand, but also need power management chip is designed with ultra-low power design.
The third is security. To prevent hackers access to patient data, need to implant chips in encryption technology, making the chip with authentication, this high-security chip market demand. Program providers for medical electronics, medical electronics industry to understand and grasp the relevant standards and norms and certification throughout the program design and management, increase the product\\ s features more than competitive and strategic significance.
Fourth, long-range chip management. Remote update via the Internet and remote delete patient information, which requires stronger security MCU communications.
Fifth, many running in parallel and inter-MCU communication capabilities. With the equipment of the complex and multi-functional devices usually have a number of MCU, effective communication between them will be very important. The MCU should establish standard communication protocols.
Sixth, to support medical data exchange standards, in particular, HL7V3 standard, so that the device can be directly linked into the public health information network.
In addition, medical electronics, in addition to the basic home medical equipment, there is an aging population, nursing facilities, chronic disease management devices also have great needs. Care equipment in addition to the aging population to care for the body, but also for body care, such as the elderly can not fall, if fall it may lead to stroke, which also need to place monitoring. Chronic disease management requires long-term measurement, monitoring equipment, such as hypertension, diabetes, and some data to store 10 or even 20 years, and the equipment to the smaller development. These are made on the MCU higher requirements. Future integration, networking, digital, intelligent development of portable medical electronics will become a catalyst for rapid growth, future MCU integration will be higher, this will reduce power consumption, the cost will be significantly reduced.
In addition to MCU, the sensor also need to have greater development of its accuracy, reliability requirements are higher, even more than military. There are pH sensors, optical sensors, electronic sensors, these sensors to combine with the MCU, medical equipment manufacturers will be the real test.