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Just now out in the press is the news that
CEA-Leti and five partners are combining their expertise to develop a self-powered cardiac pacemaker eight times smaller than current models.
The Heart-Beat Scavenger (HBS) Consortium, which also includes the Sorin Group, TIMA, Cedrat Technologies, Tronics and EASII IC, is targeting an energy self-sufficient device that harvests mechanical energy from the movements of the heart, eliminating the need for batteries and post-implant surgeries to replace them.
A longer-term goal of the project is to reduce healthcare expenditures. Heart failure represents one of the biggest public-health costs today in Europe and the United States.
Technological advances in miniaturizing and cutting the power consumption of electronic components, as well as the advent of energy-harvesting devices, have opened the way to new self-powered implants that significantly improve patient comfort and lower cost, particularly by reducing the number of post-implant surgeries required. These devices constitute a new market for active implantable medical devices (AIMDs) for treating or diagnosing heart diseases.
Related articles
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- US Drug Watchdog Urges Users Of Darvocet, Darvon, Or Propoxyphene Who Now Have A Pacemaker Or Heart Condition To Get Identified (prweb.com)
- How can one tell if they have a faulty pacemaker? (zocdoc.com)
- Pacemaker patients gain access to MRIs (theglobeandmail.com)
- Medtronic’s Tiny Pacemaker – No Surgery, No leads, Wireless Communications (singularityhub.com)
