Health-care electronics: the market, the challenges, the progress

Exploding health care demands and costs of aging and stressed populations necessitate the use of more in-home monitoring and personalized health care. Electronics hold great promise to improve the quality and reduce the cost of health care. The speakers in this hot topic session will discuss the field of health care electronics from all aspects. First, the market of health care electronics is described, and realities, trends and hypes will be pointed out. The second presentation describes the engineering challenges in ultra low-power disposable electronics for wireless body sensor applications. Both the sensor aspects, the related signal processing, and business models will be discussed. The third presentation talks about embedded bio-stimulation applications in cochlea implants, thereby highlighting the design challenges in terms of power consumption and extreme reliability of these devices. The final presentation discusses the application of brain stimulation and recording with respect to artifact reduction and field steering, and describes aspects of the modeling and design strategy. In this way, this hot-topic session offers the attendees a complete picture of the field of health-care electronics, ranging from the business to the technological and design aspects.