Prof. Sandro Carrara
Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland
July 15, 2010 | 11:00 to 12:00 | 521 Cory Hall, Hogan Room
Host: Ming Wu
The aim of this talk is to present an innovative concept for multi-metabolites, highly integrated, fully implantable, and real-time monitoring systems for human metabolism. On-line monitoring for diagnosis and/or treatment of patients with specific physiological conditions (e.g., heart, cardiovascular, cancer) or convalescents is a key factor to provide better, more rational, effective and ultimately low-cost health care. On-line monitoring is also required in professionals and recreational sportsmen training, as well as in elderly and/or disabled citizen care. The ultimate goal of improved health care on those subjects is the extension of their autonomy, the improvement of their comfort levels and their integration into everyday life, and the maintenance of their safety through embedded systems to alert emergency services (i.e., the public transportation drivers) in the event of a potentially dangerous situation. Some systems for on-line monitoring are available in the market. They use wearable devices (accelerometers, heartbeat monitoring system, etc.) but they do not measure metabolites. The only available real-time, implantable/wearable systems for metabolic control are limited to glucose monitoring and used only by diabetic patients. However, many other molecules present crucial relevance in human metabolism in chronic patients. So far, there are no available implantable/wearable systems for multi-metabolites, real-time, on-line monitoring of the human metabolism. The considered metabolic molecules will be glucose, lactate, cholesterol, ATP, and others. To pursue their detection, an innovative technology is discussed. The new approach proposed in this talk is obtained by integrating nano/bio/micro/CMOS/SW/RF systems in three devices: (i) a fully implantable sensor array for data acquisition; (ii) a wearable station for remote powering and signal processing; (iii) a remote station for data collection, elaboration and storage. The major breakthroughs are in the areas of: (i) nano-sensors; (ii) software design for signal analysis; (iii) HW/Bio co-design; (iv) multi-panel metabolites detection; (v) fully implantable sensors; (vi) remote powering for biomedical implants.
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