MEMS

Exciting!

by Lavender - 2024-01-21 09:18:52

I'm thinking that in just a few generations in the future, devices will be microscopic and perhaps implanted with a simple injection like microchipping. 😉

wonders of modern technology

by Gemita - 2024-01-22 05:20:11

Piglet, thank you for reminding us that we are making progress even if it doesn't always feel like it.  We are all living longer too and so will surely benefit from MEMS technology in the future as we are already benefiting today.  But how far we have come since those early pacemaker device days when equipment was so cumbersome.

Your comment - an accelerometer that would easily sit on the head of a fine dressmaking pin, the microscopic manufacturing of the component and it's incorporation into our heart devices, too small for any human to manipulate and all the work would be done by robots is, quite frankly, hard to contemplate. 

I am already using a biosensor to detect and monitor glucose.  I believe there are biosensors to monitor hemoglobin, urea, amino acids, body gases, viruses, bacteria, and cancer biomarkers.  BioMEMS are used as devices for the constant and continuous measuring of blood oxygen, intraocular or aortic pressure, electrical impulses, or metabolic processes and can be either wearable or implantable.  Quite frankly amazing!  Where will it end?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8875460/#:~:text=With%20a%20size%20ranging%20from,3,4,5%5D.

Lavender

by piglet22 - 2024-01-22 05:57:27

Don't get too excited!

There will always be constraints with things like connectors and batteries.

The real advances will come through processing power and built in intelligence 

The heart electrical system is one of the most fixable by using electronics.

One of the advantages of mobile phones and other wearable technology is that all these useful components become available to the pacemaker manufacturers and eventually us 

Gemita

by piglet22 - 2024-01-22 07:00:34

Yes, it's truly amazing 

What I didn't add was that the bulk of these micro devices is the package it is contained in and the necessary connections.

An accelerometer measures movement in three axes and used to be quite chunky devices.

Now, all that sophisticated engineering is etched onto silicon using nanotechnology.

Nano machines have already been proposed to wander around veins and arteries making repairs.

We will certainly benefit from being fitted with more and more devices like your glucose monitor. Even that technology is amazing.

Nano technology is at the nanometre scale.

To put this in context, a ruler might have markings of centimetres and millimetres.

A millimetre is a thousandth of a metre.

Divide that by a thousand and you get a micrometre.

Divide that by another thousand and you get a nanometre.

So one nanometre is a millionth of that already very small measurement on your ruler.

I use drills not much thicker than a hair

 Breathe and it breaks