From skin to silicon: How sensors in medical patches and implants redefine healthcare
By Luca Gubellini, Product Marketing Manager, STMicroelectronics
Continuous, connected healthcare is becoming a reality. Sensors are central to this transformation, not only algorithms, connectivity, or cloud platforms. Medical patches worn on the skin and implantable devices inside the body convert physiological signals into electrical data streams that can be captured, interpreted, and acted upon. For engineers, these devices present nearly every challenge in electronics design: ultralow-power sensing, harsh environments, strict regulation, small form factors, demanding safety requirements, and increasingly, on-device intelligence.
Modern medical patches are thin, flexible, and often disposable devices that adhere to the skin. Although they appear simple, they integrate complex sensing chains, including electrodes or photodiodes on the surface, MEMS inertial sensors embedded in the substrate, analog front ends (AFEs), microcontrollers, memory, and wireless transceivers.
Typical applications include long-term ECG monitoring for arrhythmia detection, postoperative and post-discharge vital sign monitoring, continuous or episodic glucose and metabolic monitoring,...
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