HEALTHY AIMS: Nano scale materials and sensors and microsystems for medical implants improving health and quality of life

• Forschungsstelle: EU FRP
• Projektnummer: 03.0500
• Projekttitel Englisch: HEALTHY AIMS: Nano scale materials and sensors and microsystems for medical implants improving health and quality of life

Schlüsselwörter (Englisch)

Nanodevices; Microsystems; biomedical materials

Alternative Projektnummern (Englisch)

EU project number: 001837

Forschungsprogramme (Englisch)

EU-programme: 6. Frame Research Programme - 1.2 Communications technologies

Kurzbeschreibung (Englisch)

See abstract

Abstract (Englisch)

In this project key microsystem technologies and communication methods will be developed that bring intelligence directly to the human, in the form of medical implants and ambulatory measurement systems, and also enable information from these devices to be transmitted out into the wider environment. The microsystem technologies to be developed can be applied to any generic Ambient Intelligent system comprising sensors, actuators, an intelligent processor and a wiring loom. The medical applications have been chosen for 2 reasons. Firstly, they will progress the existing State of the Art in Microsystems in terms of size, reliability, and power constraints far more than many other application sectors. In addition, there will be a direct positive impact into the health of EU citizens. The overall objective is to develop the technologies that go to make up a microsystem, and then produce specific medical devices to exploit these technologies. The 4 year project, with 27 partners, is structured with the focus on the microsystem technology development, most of which does not include silicon. This is seen as crucial if complete microsystems are to be rea1ised in the coming few years. This project includes participants from all of the disciplines necessary to produce a complete generic microsystem. The result will be a range of core technologies and medical devices utilising these core technologies. Intelligence will be given back to people where part of their own internal system has failed. Quality of life will be improved for millions of EU citizens and the long term cost of treating people will reduce significantly. The resulting final medical products include cochlear and retina implants, nerve stimulation, bladder control and blood monitoring systems. It is estimated from the available statistics that around 50% of the western population i.e. around 500 million citizens, will suffer from at least one of the health problems targeted in this project.

Datenbankreferenzen (Englisch)

Swiss Database: Euro-DB of the
State Secretariat for Education and Research
Hallwylstrasse 4
CH-3003 Berne, Switzerland
Tel. [phone]
Swiss Project-Number: 03.0500