Miniaturized electronic packaging for wearable health monitors

Transcription

1 Miniaturized electronic packaging for wearable health monitors Jayna Sheats Terepac Corporation, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada Market needs Technology needs What Terepac does to address both 2013 MEPTEC Medical Technology Conference, Tempe, AZ; Sep 2013

2 The role of electronics in the medical arena All diagnostic tools require electronics Imaging systems (CAT, MRI, ultrasound, ) Chemical analysis Bedside patient monitoring, etc. But their cost is a major and growing problem: about half of real health care expenditure growth has been 160 attributable to medical technology (Medicare Trust Fund, Technical Panel Report, 2000) Hospital costs % What can be done about it? Imaging costs Move diagnostics out of the hospital and clinics Harvard Medical School, 2005 Provide earlier warnings of impending illness Help people stay healthy and away from hospitals and clinics Technology needs: Small Light Comfortable Easy to use Cheap But highly effective!

3 Near-term areas of interest Applications on the market today or emerging from trials and pilot projects Physiological parameters Heart rate, ECG Blood pressure Oxygen (respiration effectiveness) Blood glucose Isansys ECG Contact lens glucose monitor (Univ. Michigan) Muscle condition Progress in rehabilitation (e.g. post-op; physical therapy) Athletes: optimal training without injury 24 Monitoring of the elderly Ambulatory condition Amount of exercise Medication compliance % Pharmaceuticals Cold chain monitoring Compliance People over 65 Univ. London, 2007

4 What's available today ECG: lots! (at least 12 wearable; several handheld) BPM: with cuff or direct pressure on wrist (Sotera has a non-invasive pressure-free product under development) Nordic/IDT Healthstats Glucose: minimally invasive Medtronic Biovotion: non-invasive, multi-sensor; under development Motion: several products have motion sensors; full solution yet to come Technology needs - satisfied? Small Light Comfortable Easy to use Cheap But highly effective!

5 What is needed for widespread adoption Most people will use technology if the skills and manipulations involved are familiar from everyday life: Pervasive: existing in or spreading through every part of something (Merriam-Webster) Pervasive computing: so much a part of everyday life for most people that they are more noticeable by their absence than by their presence (Joel Birnbaum, former Sr. VP, HP) Wearable: implies that the object can be a part of what we wear Aesthetics and comfort should be similar to what we are accustomed to AMON (ETH et al.) Zio ECG How do we get truly unobtrusive wearable medical monitors?

6 Terepac Corporation Giving Voice to the World Terepac's goal is to integrate electronics into the world we live in From data collection Small products Pervasive electronics Ultrasmall chips: 160x160 µm, 25 µm thick To data analysis Data analytics Big Data collection

7 Core Technology: Printing Integrated Circuits (a) Pre-press (b) Printing Diced, thin chips are transferred en masse to transfer substrate coated with Digital Release AdhesiveTM Printhead is brought into proximity of substrate Light + heat causes vaporization of the DRA, leaving chip adhered to adjacent substrate Thin, diced wafer (preferably <50 µm) on thermal or UV release adhesive on framed backing tape Printhead removes array of chips (on the underside of printhead; no change in relative position from wafer) Only chips selected by optical exposure (shown in blue) are printed when the DRA is heated (T<150C). One or multiple chips can be printed simultaneously.

8 Interconnects: printing + thin chips MSP430, 25 µm thick, aerosol printing Polymer ramp

9 Planar Architecture High resolution interconnections are best made on a flat surface: d) A permanent substrate is laminated on top e) The laminate is cured to form a solid interface a) Chips are printed face down on a temporary substrate with release coating b) All components, regardless of height, are covered with a curable encapsulant c) The encapsulant is partially cured f) The permanent substrate is delaminated from the release layer and turned over

10 Micromodules 2.45 GHz radio chip 4mm Microprocessor The circuit below is a complete ECG monitor (less electrodes and battery): the ICs are 1/6 of the thickness of the substrate Terepac Test Chip 160um Areas where MEMS can contribute to the product characteristics independent of sensors

11 How small can ICs be? Hitachi µ-chip 2.45 GHz 128 bit RFID, 30 cm read range; 50x50 µm; 90 nm lithography Sensor processor, 2.6 pj/instrr., 2kB SRAM, 85,000 µm2; 0.13 µm lithography (Blaauw) Green Arrays 18-bit MPU; 1.5ns instruction cycle; 7 pj/instr.; 148 word memory. 240x520 µm; 180 nm lithography 8 bit microprocessor,3.5 pj/instr., 350 khz; 2.5 kb memory 0.13 µm lithography (Blaauw) Mobile chip with digital controller, power conversion and 25 MB/s RF communication (Ada Poon) Passive (C, L) addressable Si chips, 10x10 µm, inside living cells (Poon) Si chips (160 x 160 µm, 25 µm thick)

12 Conclusions Technology needs: Small Light Comfortable Easy to use Cheap But highly effective! Thinned silicon ICs can provide all the functionality needed by medical applications, in a thin (<100 µm total), flexible and very low power (µw) form, at a cost substantially lower than anything on the market today. A new packaging technology is required to realize this result, which is capable of handling micron-scale objects with high throughput and yield, and minimizing the physical packaging material (to get the smallest size) and process steps (to get the lowest cost).