Human++ - biomedical electronics
Nanoelectronics to improve lifestyle and healthcare
Our healthcare system is under pressure: it is estimated that by 2025 healthcare costs will exceed 15% of GDP in OECD countries, fueled by growing elderly populations, the ubiquity of unhealthy lifestyles and the increased incidence of chronic diseases. Paired with an increasingly personalized standard of care, these factors necessitate the allocation of more resources than are currently available. More effective and sustainable healthcare models are therefore needed. Nanoelectronics technologies are in a unique position to address this need by driving and supporting innovation for biomedical tools used across the healthcare continuum of care, from prediction to detection and treatment.
Remote health monitoring is one way to reduce the cost of treatment of chronic diseases while improving the patients’ health and comfort.Telehealth technologies can reduce visits to hospitals and doctor’s offices and improve patient health with lifestyle coaching. Highly sensitive sensors attached to and implanted in the body will communicate over body-area networks not only providing lifestyle modification but also delivering just-in time, life-saving information to physicians or even closed-loop therapy.
Also, diagnostics can be significantly improved thanks to the evolution in science and technology.They will achieve greater sensitivity, specificity and reliability at more affordable cost. Biosensors can measure extremely low concentrations of clinically relevant molecules, allowing earlier and more precise detection of disease markers. Incorporated into lab-on-chip systems, biosensors allow seamless integration of all processes from sample collection to detection and quantification. Such lab-on-chip systems will play an important role in reducing the cost and eliminating the factor of human error while increasing the accessibility and efficiency of diagnostics.
At the other end of the healthcare spectrum, the efficiency of treatments can be improved and the cost reduced by developing evidence-based and targeted therapies. Side effects will be reduced to a minimum by specific therapies. Again here, sensors will play a prominent role, closely following the relevant molecular profiles of the patient allowing adjustment of the therapy accordingly.
These advances in diagnostics, medicine and therapy can only become reality by bringing life sciences research to the next level. Life sciences can benefit from progress in nanoelectronics which is now working at dimensions and with a precision equaling those of biology. Research at imec focuses on fulfilling the promise of micro- and nanotechnology by improving the sensitivity and resolution of biologically relevant measurements while accounting for the complexity of biological systems. Imec offers application-specific platforms that can be tailored to interrogate biological processes at the molecular, cellular, or system level by optimizing biological interfaces, surface topology, sensor modality and read-out circuitry.