The future of medical electronics

Medical electronics have a very important role to play in improving the quality of health care in the form of diagnosis and therapy of illness. In addition it has an equally important role in the prevention of sickness. The success of such devices depends on the ability to measure and interpret the wide variety of signals linked to the underlying physical condition. For example, in ultrasound systems, the electronics needs to be able to analyze signal strength varying over 100dB in magnitude. This paper will cover some of the range of process and design challenges to meet these requirements. Future trends and directions are also discussed.