Advances in materials, microsystems, signal processing, and intelligent systems technologies hold great promise for creating new generations of diagnostic and therapeutic medical devices. Biomedical circuits and systems will play an important role in realizing their full potential for automated therapies that are tailored to an individual’s needs. We anticipate that the technical area of biomedical circuits and systems will create a strong impact in biomedical research fields in the coming years.

New materials, micromachining, and MEMS technologies will enable microscopic sensors, microfluidic structures, and micro-actuators. These will enable sophisticated implants, non-invasive, and minimally invasive devices for sensing and manipulating body parameters, and labs on chip for portable and/or bulk analysis of biological and biochemical samples. The former may reintroduce body functions that are absent or have been lost, like glucose sensing and insulin regulation for diabetes patients (i.e. artificial pancreas), and the latter can be of utmost importance in meeting modern biomedical challenges such as pandemics or environmental hazards. In this context also the rapid progress in nanotechnology will contribute with nano-scale devices and new types of sensors exploiting properties of nano-scale structures, such as surface plasmon resonance on nanoparticles or changing conductive properties of carbon nanotubes.

Functional nerve stimulation and nerve recordings with portable systems will advance the treatment of various neurological pathologies. First steps have, for example, been taken to let paraplegic patients control their own muscles naturally with nerve signals, just as if the spine was still intact. Deep brain stimulation has been successfully applied to ameliorate many conditions, for example motion disorders and epilepsy. Novel neuronal interface technologies, e.g. optical, chemical, or non-invasive transcranial magnetic actuation will become more mature. Brain machine interfaces (that are still quite experimental today) will profit from the rapidly increasing quality of observable neurophysiological activity, as well as improved techniques for providing feedback to neural and/or muscular systems to complete the two-way interface.

Ultra low power processing, sensor and actuator control, and wireless communication in turn are crucial to enable portability and miniaturization of these new classes of biomedical devices. We foresee that networks of such devices will communicate and coordinate their activities via body area networks. Energy harvesting, energy autonomy, and power efficacy will be improved significantly beyond today’’s state of the art in the next few years, allowing more continuous and detailed monitoring of a human subject’s’ physiological condition and of environmental parameters. Application-dedicated, hierarchical, and data-compressing communication protocols will be required to use the available bandwidth effectively for multiple site sensing and stimulation.

The ever-increasing live stream of medical data will also require more efficient on-site processing to keep the amount of data and communication bandwidth in check and to allow patients to become more independent and empower them to make more qualified home health care decisions, reducing the cost of health care and the work load of medical experts. Better remote monitoring will shorten hospitalization times but will also require enhanced security against cyberattack and smart data management. Advanced and efficient off-line processing of multimodal data of both present and future home care and intensive care devices will augment the quality, timeliness and reliability of diagnoses.

Artificial systems faithfully mimicking biological systems will allow biological experiments using cellular surrogates or in some cases without the need for biological samples entirely, reducing both the cost of experimentation and the need for animal experimentation. Bio-inspired engineering solutions will surpass traditional solutions and unlock new applications. Hybrid systems composed of both biological and electronic components will become more feasible as, for example, today’s neurons cultured and interfaced to electronics may in the future be used as environmental sensors or even as active computational components. Molecular computers based on biological building blocks such as proteins and nucleic acids may someday soon go beyond their experimental stage.

Beyond the a 10 year horizon the TC’s visions are very speculative and probably just as accurate as any Science Fiction novel. Some trends, however, will most likely continue: that of the further miniaturization and prevalence inside and outside the body of medical devices and ever more ‘natural’ and non-obtrusive interfacing with the body, and the ever increasing data flow and general availability of a complete medical records and diagnostics for both the individual and medical personnel. Enhancements of body functions may become possible and also be experienced as such without undue discomfort. Ethical issues and the potential for miss-use will also increase in pace with the development and will require constant attention and careful consideration.

Then maybe we will be able to have nanoscopic machines circulating in the blood performing body repair and drug delivery. Maybe we will be able to control a car or a plane by mere thought. Maybe the blind will see as accurately as any other person or one might even be equipped with infrared vision. Maybe movies can be projected directly onto visual cortex. The lame may indeed walk without anyone noticing that they are using an aid, not even they themselves. Smart exoskeletons may make heavy lifting easy for everyone. However that far future of biomedical circuits and systems may look like, we would be amazed indeed could we see it already today.

The TC meeting was held as scheduled. 38 members and 4 membership candidates attended the meeting. Philipp Hafliger organized the meeting. Several important issues related to the BIOCAS TC were fully discussed, with volunteers identified. The new TC website was introduced at the meeting. It raised interests among the TC members to post relevant acitivities onto the TC website. 3 new members were approved during the TC meeting. Due to the resignation of Wael Badway as the TC chair, Philipp Hafliger advanced to the TC chair, George Yuan advanced to the TC vice chair. Pamela Abshire was elected as the new TC secretary. Thanks everybody for the good meeting.

Detailed meeting minutes can be found here.

Venue: Suite 5244, Disney’s hotel New York – Convention Centre, Paris (please check the notice board at the conference)

Time: 12:50-14:00, June 1st

The meeting agenda is here.  See you in Paris !