Micro-technologies with medical applications

When?

Thursday 31 March 2011, 13:00

Where?

2ATI02

Open to:

Students, Staff

Speaker:

Tony Corless, Laboratory and Business Development Manager, Advanced Technology Institute, University of Surrey

The medical sector naturally attracts considerable interest from the microsystems community. The area poses interesting challenges, often has research funding and offers the potential for sufficiently high value that the cost of development can be repaid.

In this talk particular attention will be given first to technologies used to integrate an ultrasound imager into a catheter that enters the body through the femoral artery and takes images inside the arterial system; to some uses of micro-fabrication in pharmaceuticals R&D and health screening; and to developments of long-term implants, such as cochlear and retinal implants and muscle stimulators. These are part of an increasingly urgent response to the societal care needs particularly of the ageing population, that is, "Ambient Assisted Living". This area is attracting significant interest from major corporations, some of which is surprising at first sight. For example, mobile phone companies are very interested.

These research projects developed from other programmes in apparently wholly unrelated areas, including high density computer packaging and nuclear fuel reprocessing on a chip. Reference will be made to those programmes as background