In the medical industry, more and more compact wearable devices are emerging, becoming the best tools to monitor patients’ physiological state. With the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) technology, these wearable devices have become more accurate and intelligent and able to predict physical conditions of patients and give early warning, rescue or medication, which saves the life of more patients. This article will introduce the latest development of wearable devices combined with AI technology and solutions of ADI, onsemi and Murata who use Arrow Electronics as an agent.
Perfect Combination of AI and Wearable Technology
The use of wearable devices in healthcare applications has actually existed for a long time. For example, hearing aids are the most common wearable devices. In the late 1980s, the invention of digital hearing aids represented the shift of this industry to digitalization. Later, wearable devices were developed in various forms and applied more and more in the healthcare field.
Nowadays, with the support of smart sensor, AI, and machine learning technologies, wearable devices are used in remote patient monitoring, early diagnosis, and chronic disease monitoring to improve patients’ daily health and lifestyle. They can even be used for handling emergencies. Because of this, the use of intelligent wearable devices in the healthcare field has been increasing. It is expected that these devices will save about US$200 billion industry costs for US in the next few years, and that the global intelligent wearable device market will reach US$180 billion by 2025.
In general, wearable devices are characterized by mobility, autonomy, accuracy, and ease of use; when they are combined with AI technology, they will become excellent aids tools for healthcare service providers. Especially in the COVID-19 pandemic period when using appropriate medical facilities become more difficult to access, AI wearable devices are particularly important.
At present, wearable devices can carry out remote heart monitoring using AI and sound detection technologies, and predict women’s fertility using AI and big data. They can also help blind and visually impaired people to navigate in an environment and prevent them collision with surrounding obstacles, and help deaf people to “feel” the environment, which improves the activity ability of these people. For many patients with chronic diseases such as diabetes, wearable devices can also monitor their blood glucose changes at any time and automatically inject insulin to improve their quality of life.
With the perfect combination of AI and wearable technology, medical care data generated by wearable devices can be processed using AI algorithms to generate a timely inference, based on which medical personnel can make data-supported decisions. Through wearable devices, medical personnel can perform remote medical treatment in time, too. With the expansion of coverage and accessibility of high-speed internet, and the growing demand for providing better treatment choices at lower costs, innovative applications and products that combine AI-driven wearable devices will see a huge development potential in future and continue to shock the entire industry.
Complete Product Line Meets the Health Monitoring Needs of Wearable Devices
ADI has invested a lot of effort in the field of wearable health monitoring devices. With ADI’s optical, impedance, biopotential and motion sensor technologies and signal conditioning expertise, a variety of wearable health monitoring devices can be designed, such as fitness band, sports watch, or pedometer. ADI’s ADuCM350 development platform is a highly integrated, precision, and low-power meter-on-a-chip. This platform integrates a 16-bit accurate analog frontend (AFE), a Cortex M3 processing subsystem, and an industry-standard software development environment. Powered by button cells and combined with ADI’s standard converters and linear and mixed-signal components, this platform allows you to complete a variety of discrete designs.
ADI boasts a variety of products for developing wearable health monitoring devices, such as ADPD4100, ADPD4101, AD8233, ADF7030, ADF7030-1, ADP530, ADPD105, ADPD106, and ADPD107. ADPD4100 and ADPD4101 are multimode sensor frontends. AD8233 is an integrated signal conditioning module for electrocardiogram (ECG) and other bioelectrical measurement. ADF7030 is a radio transceiver IC that features high performance and low power and works at 169 MHz ISM band. ADF7030-1 is a high-performance radio transceiver IC that works at sub-GHz. ADP530 is a 150 mA/500 mA power step-down regulator that works efficiently at ultralow power. ADPD105 is an I2C photometric front end. ADPD106 is a photometric front end integrated with one output and SPI. ADPD107 is a photometric front end integrated with an SPI.
More ADI products include ADuCM3029, ADUCM350, ADXL354, ADXL355, and ADXL362. ADuCM3029 is a low-power ARM Cortex-M3 MCU integrated with power management and 256 KB embedded flash memory. ADUCM350 is a network analyzer and potentiostat with integrated Cortex M3 core and configurable impedance. When ADuCM3029 or ADUCM350 is equipped with ADXL354, a low-noise, low-drift, low-power 3-axis accelerometer with analog output, ADXL355, a low-noise, low-drift, low-power 3-axis accelerometer with digital output, or ADXL362, a micropower, 3-axis, ±2 g /±4 g/±8 g digital output MEMS accelerometer, they can deliver wearable health monitoring devices with richer functions.
ADI also offers several reference designs that can accelerate customer product development, such as the CN0133, CN0160, CN0159, and CN0274. CN0133 uses the precision analog microcontroller ADuC7024 and digital accelerometer ADXL345 to detect low-g acceleration. CN0160 is used for USB peripheral isolator circuits. CN0159 is used for USB cable isolator circuits. CN0274 works at ultra-low power and standalone motion switch.
Complete Solution to Space-Constrained Wearable Medical Devices
onsemi delivers complete solutions to wearable medical devices. Seeing a rise in the market of point-of-care technologies and devices, onsemi medical devices allow more testing and diagnostics to be performed around patients, which increases effectiveness and success rates. Advanced medical testing technologies (for testing blood glucose level, oxygen saturation, rapid streptococcus) and noninvasive genomic diagnostics such as liquid biopsy provide patients with improved point-of-care testing (POCT) and faster treatment choices.
onsemi’s broad image sensor portfolio provides camera manufacturers with a variety of choices and meets requirements of all possible end applications, including wearable devices and consumer electronics, and industrial, medical and automotive applications. onsemi’s advanced packaging and product miniaturization technologies are dedicated to medical applications where size, performance and system integration are critical. For example, the space-constrained problem of hearing aids that existed more than 40 years was solved by onsemi, which established the leadership of onsemi in this field.
Take hearing aid applications as an example. onsemi has been a leading provider of low-power solutions for hearing aid manufacturers. The solutions use the Audiology DSP system technology and the EZAIRO 5900, EZAIRO 7100, Ezairo 8300, EZAIRO 7160 SL, and EZAIRO 7111 products. EZAIRO 5900 has two independent and fully programmable signal processing cores, and each core has unique attributes. EZAIRO 7100 meets the high performance and low power requirements of advanced hearing aids and hearing implants devices. Ezairo 8300 is an advanced audio processor and equipped with 6 programmable or semi-programmable processing cores to ensure high degree of parallelism and flexibility. EZAIRO 7160 SL is a DSP-based open programmable hybrid module that enables wireless connection to hearing aids. EZAIRO 7111 is also a DSP-based open programmable hybrid module designed for non-wireless hearing aids.
onsemi AYRE SA3291 is a pre-configured wireless DSP system for hearing aids and has up to 8 WDRC channels. The pre-configured wireless DSP system uses Near Field Magnetic Induction (NFMI) technology to enable hearing aids to synchronize the program mode and volume control through a wireless network and stream telecoil signals from one hearing aid to another. When used in combination with a relay, the AYRE SA3291 can implement functions such as remote control and stereo audio streaming through Bluetooth®.
Meet Low-Power and Reliable Connection Requirements of Healthcare Devices
As more and more electronic products enter the healthcare field, electronic advancements continuously enhance the functions of healthcare devices. Standing at the cutting edge of these electronic advancements, Murata helps shape the future of global healthcare.
Healthcare devices connect to each other more and more through networks, and they are characterized by low power and reliable connection. Murata’s radio frequency (RF) modules haven been verified and demonstrate excellent RF performance, helping customers connect most devices with ease. Even if customers have limited space problems and low power requirements, the RF modules can help the devices meet specifications. The combo module (Wifi a/b/g/n/ac/ax + Bluetooth 5.2.) Type 1XL, Murata p/n: LBEE5ZZ1XL-774 makes design quite easy and supports antenna matching. They can be used to connect medical devices such as electronic health/home monitor, blood pressure monitor, blood glucose meter.
Another Murata Bluetooth® module, MBN52832, Murata p/n: WSM-BL241-ADA-008 boasts a size as small as 7.4 × 7.0 × 0.9 mm. With Murata’s packaging technology, Murata’s Bluetooth® module is very small, sparing more space for customers’ products. MBN52832’s metal coat shielding technology eliminates the need for metal can shielding and minimizes cost and product size for customers. In a design where space is precious, MBN52832 can use the least space without sacrificing Bluetooth® function or power. This Bluetooth module already includes RF design, freeing high frequency analog design. It also passes the FCC/IC/CE/TELEC test, which makes module certification much easier. The combination of this module with the embedded MCU module is the simplest and smallest solution. An onboard antenna module is also available.
With excellent RF design, this Bluetooth® module can work at a high data rate even if the communication distance is long. If its working data rate is reduced, the communication distance can be longer. With well tunning, high RF performance, and support antenna and matching for customer’s application. Murata’s modules can be used in a variety of personal healthcare devices such as blood pressure monitor, thermometer, hearing aid, blood glucose meter, insulin pump, and skin patch.
Conclusion
Wearable medical devices have become the best partners for health-valuing people and patients with chronic diseases, and they can also provide references for doctors on treatment, which will greatly change the development of the medical industry. The product solutions of ADI, onsemi, and Murata introduced in this article can provide a complete product portfolio for development of wearable medical devices. Manufacturers who intend to enter the wearable medical device market can contact Arrow Electronics for more product information and technical support.