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Online ISSN 1350-911X Print ISSN 0013-5194

Electronics Letters

Volume 47, Issue 26, 22 December 2011

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Volume 47, Issue 26

22 December 2011

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Editorial

  • Semiconductors in Personalised Medicine

    • Semiconductors for early detection and therapy
      • Author(s): P. Georgiou  and  C. Toumazou
      • Source: Electronics Letters, Volume 47, Issue 26, p. 4 –6
      • DOI:  10.1049/el.2011.3157
      • Type: Article
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      • p. 4 –6 (3)
        Presented is an overview of how semiconductor technology is now being used for early detection on therapy of disease. Specifically two areas are described, which are currently utilising CMOS technology with tremendous benefit in healthcare. The first is in genomics, whereby advances in CMOS-based ISFET technology is now allowing implementation of point-of-care diagnostic systems as well as genetic sequencing systems which are scalable, miniature and fabricated at low cost, and the second is in bioinspired prosthetics, whereby low-power CMOS-based systems can be designed to replicate biology to provide implantable and portable devices for personalised therapy of conditions such as diabetes.
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      Piet Bergveld - 40 years of ISFET technology: From neuronal sensing to DNA sequencing
      Interview with David Cumming
      • Author(s): D. Cumming
      • Source: Electronics Letters, Volume 47, Issue 26, page: 13 –13
      • DOI:  10.1049/el.2011.2681
      • Type: Article
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      • p. 13 (1)
        David Cumming (SMIEEE, FIET, BEng, Glasgow 1989 and PhD Cambridge 1993) is Professor of Electronic Systems at Glasgow University and the Director of the Electronics Design Centre for Heterogeneous Systems. From 2008–2010 he served on the Scientific Advisory Board of Ion Torrent Inc., which successfully commercialised foundry CMOS ISFET array technology that Cumming pioneered, enabling a new generation of post-light gene sequencing technology to be realised.
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      ISFET technology for multi-sensor technology: from lab-in-a-pill to massively parallel measurements
      • Author(s): D.R.S. Cumming
      • Source: Electronics Letters, Volume 47, Issue 26, p. 14 –16
      • DOI:  10.1049/el.2011.2891
      • Type: Article
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      • p. 14 –16 (3)
        Laboratory-in-a-pill, or capsule endoscopy, became a reality almost as soon as the invention of the transistor enabled miniaturisation of circuits into a small enough device. Of the many possible sensor modalities pH has emerged as an important measurand for diagnostics and laboratory analysis. Presented is the background to the early instances of the technology, including a summary of the published work on pill-based diagnostic devices. Then, how concepts from pill technology have led to further sensor integration, and to sensor system on chip (SSOC) in particular is presented. To conclude, consideration is given to how many ISFETs have been integrated using SSOC technology, and how this technology has led to the development of post-light gene sequencing systems using CMOS.
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      Interview with Philipp Häfliger
      Time domain ADC for blood glucose implant
      • Author(s): N.T. Trung  and  P. Häfliger
      • Source: Electronics Letters, Volume 47, Issue 26, p. 18 –20
      • DOI:  10.1049/el.2011.2685
      • Type: Article
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      • p. 18 –20 (3)
        An analogue-to-time and time-to-digital converter (related to an integrating ADC) optimised for the sensor interface of a pill-sized wireless micro-implant for continuous blood sugar monitoring is presented. The application requires ultra-low power consumption and aggressive miniaturisation (i.e. single ASIC integration, with only three discrete capacitors) and is characterised by an extremely low sampling rate of one sample per 5 minutes. The system power consumption is significantly reduced compared to a predecessor by choosing this faster ADC and by only powering the implant for a single conversion. Transient noise simulation data is presented that predicts 10ENOB and an energy consumption per sample of 10.2 nJ. This includes power for the major system components: the sensor, on-chip clock and bias generation, and power-up and power-down overheads when taking but a single sample.
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      Interview with Carlotta Guiducci
      • Author(s): C. Guiducci
      • Source: Electronics Letters, Volume 47, Issue 26, page: 21 –21
      • DOI:  10.1049/el.2011.3018
      • Type: Article
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      • p. 21 (1)
        Carlotta Guiducci is Assistant Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) where she holds a double appointment at the Institutes of Bioengineering and Electrical Engineering. She developed, with Infineon Technologies, the first CMOS chip for DNA label-free electrical detection. In 2011 she served as invited lecturer at the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Conference. She is Associate Editor of the ACM Journal on Emerging Technologies in Computing Systems.
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      3D integration technology for lab-on-a-chip applications
      • Author(s): Y. Temiz ; S. Kilchenmann ; Y. Leblebici ; C. Guiducci
      • Source: Electronics Letters, Volume 47, Issue 26, p. 22 –24
      • DOI:  10.1049/el.2011.2683
      • Type: Article
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      • p. 22 –24 (3)
        A review is presented of advances and challenges in fully integrated systems for personalised medicine applications. One key issue for the commercialisation of such systems is the disposability of the assay-substrate at a low cost. This work adds a new dimension to the integrated circuits technology for lab-on-a-chip systems by employing 3D integration for improved performance and functionality. It is proposed that a disposable biosensing layer can be aligned and temporarily attached to the 3D CMOS stack by the vertical interconnections, and can be replaced after each measurement.
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      Profile: Patrick Soon-Shiong
      • Author(s): P. Soon-Shiong
      • Source: Electronics Letters, Volume 47, Issue 26, page: 25 –25
      • DOI:  10.1049/el.2011.3263
      • Type: Article
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      • p. 25 (1)
        Dr Patrick Soon-Shiong is the Executive Director of the UCLA Wireless Health Institute, and Professor of Microbiology, Immunology, Molecular Genetics and Bioengineering at UCLA. He is a fellow of both the American College of Surgeons and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. He serves on the Board of Directors for the National Institute of Transplantation, the Technology Council for the Center for Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence at Northwestern University, which is part of the National Cancer Institute's (NCI) five-year initiative for nanotechnology in cancer research. He serves on the RAND Health Board of Advisors and the President's Council at RAND, the Board of Trustees for the Saint John's Health Center, the Advisory Board of the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA, the Advisory Board for the Institute for Technology Advancement (ITA) at UCLA School of Engineering, the Board of Councillors of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, and the Arizona Commerce Authority Board. He is a founding board member of the Dossia Foundation, a non-profit consortium of large employers (Wal-Mart, AT&T, BP America, Intel, Pitney Bowes, Cardinal Health, Sanofi-Aventis, Applied Materials, and Vanguard) that seek to enhance consumer engagement in their own healthcare through use of personal health records. In 2009, he was appointed by Attorney General Cuomo to the board of FAIR Health, a new not-for-profit entity to facilitate nationwide reform of consumer reimbursement for out of network healthcare charges.
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      Ultra-low-power semiconductors for wireless vital signs early warning systems
      • Author(s): P. Soon-Shiong ; C. Toumazou ; A. Burdett
      • Source: Electronics Letters, Volume 47, Issue 26, p. 26 –28
      • DOI:  10.1049/el.2011.3019
      • Type: Article
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      • p. 26 –28 (3)
        Most patients in hospital have measurements of their ‘vital signs’ taken and recorded only intermittently, thus deterioration can occur to a point of serious consequence before it is recognised. New technologies are being developed which allow increased surveillance of patients' status without the inconvenience of being physically attached to immobile monitoring systems, and thus allowing patients to move around their rooms and floor areas. The implementation of a small, low-cost, ultra-low-power and disposable vital signs monitor is described, made possible by the development of a semiconductor SoC – Sensium – which implements all of the required electronic functionality in a few square millimetres of silicon.
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      Interview with Lionel Tarassenko
      • Author(s): L. Tarassenko
      • Source: Electronics Letters, Volume 47, Issue 26, page: 29 –29
      • DOI:  10.1049/el.2011.2680
      • Type: Article
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      • p. 29 (1)
        Professor Lionel Tarassenko has been the Chair in Electrical Engineering at Oxford University since October 1997, and the Director of the Oxford Institute of Biomedical Engineering since 2008. He became a Fellow of the IEE in 1996, when he was also awarded the IEE Mather Premium for his work on neural networks. In 2000 he became a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. His work on mobile phones for healthcare was awarded the E-health 2005 Innovation Award for ‘best device to empower patients’. He was awarded the 2006 Silver Medal of the Royal Academy of Engineering for his contribution to British engineering leading to market exploitation, and he also won the IET's IT Award for ‘Data Fusion Software for Early Detection of Patient Deterioration’.
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      Semiconductor wireless technology for chronic disease management
      • Author(s): L. Tarassenko  and  D.A. Clifton
      • Source: Electronics Letters, Volume 47, Issue 26, p. 30 –32
      • DOI:  10.1049/el.2011.2679
      • Type: Article
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      • p. 30 –32 (3)
        With most chronic diseases, monitoring of one or more physiological variables (vital signs) can inform the management of the patient. In active monitoring, the patient adjusts medication dosage according to the value of the measured variable. Passive monitoring is associated with the more advanced stages of chronic diseases and requires the use of wearable sensors. ‘Digital plasters’ which exploit recent advances in semiconductor technology can now provide continuous monitoring and wireless transmission of patients' vital signs for several days. The ideal digital plaster, or adhesive patch, for long-term passive monitoring would incorporate both electrical and optical measurements. Other promising technologies for the future include implantable sensors and non-contact vital sign imaging.
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      Interview with Andreas G. Andreou
      • Author(s): A.G. Andreou
      • Source: Electronics Letters, Volume 47, Issue 26, page: 33 –33
      • DOI:  10.1049/el.2011.3262
      • Type: Article
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      • p. 33 (1)
        Professor Andreas G. Andreou was born in Nicosia, Cyprus. He is the co-founder of the Johns Hopkins University Center for Language and Speech Processing and Director of the Whitaker Institute Microfabrication Laboratory. His research is aimed at brain-inspired microsystems for sensory information, life sciences microsystems and human language processing. Notable microsystems achievements over the last 25 years include a contrast sensitive silicon retina; the first CMOS polarisation sensitive imager; silicon rods in standard foundry CMOS for single photon detection; a large-scale mixed analogue/digital associative processor for character recognition; the first truly autonomous chip-scale hybrid silicon/silicone microsystem for cell culture and incubation; and an ultra-low power CMOS sensor for retinal prosthesis. In 1996 Andreou was elected as an IEEE Fellow ‘for his contribution in energy efficient sensory microsystems.’
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      Johns Hopkins on the chip: microsystems and cognitive machines for sustainable, affordable, personalised medicine and healthcare
      • Author(s): A.G. Andreou
      • Source: Electronics Letters, Volume 47, Issue 26, p. 34 –37
      • DOI:  10.1049/el.2011.3233
      • Type: Article
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      • p. 34 –37 (4)
        Semiconductor technology is contributing to the advancement of biotechnology, medicine and healthcare delivery in ways that it was never envisioned – from chip micro-arrays, to scientific grade CMOS imagers and ion sensing arrays to implantable prosthesis. This exponential growth of sensory microsystems has led to an exponential growth of data. Cognitive machines, i.e. advanced computer architectures and algorithms, are carefully co-designed to extract knowledge from such health data making rational decisions and recommendations for therapies. Nano, micro and macro robotics driven by sophisticated algorithms interface to the human body at different levels and scales, from nano-scale molecules to micron-scale cells to networks and all the way to the scale of organisms. The present era is one where semiconductor technology and the ‘chip’ is the foundation of sustainable and affordable personalised medicine and healthcare delivery.
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