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Innovative Medical Devices With Less Cost, Less Energy

EU-funded researchers are driving innovation, and the healthcare sector is projected to be the latest beneficiary of this effort. Researchers from the DESYRE ('On-demand system reliability') project are developing a system that is reliable but based on unreliable components. DESYRE is backed under the 'Information and communication technologies' (ICT) Theme of the EU's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) to the tune of EUR 2.8 million.

Speaking to participants at the recent DATE 2012 conference in Dresden, Germany, DESYRE project leader Ioannis Sourdis from the Department of Computer Engineering at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden said devices being used by the medical world today, such as pacemakers and other implantable medical devices, rely on three critical components: reliability, small size and longevity. This is where the DESYRE consortium comes in.

Experts estimate that fault rates will increase as technology develops. The DESYRE team is creating new design techniques for future 'Systems-on-Chips' to give reliability a boost but to also cut power and performance overheads that are associated with fault tolerance.

'We focus on the design of future highly reliable Systems-on-Chips that consume far less power than other designs for high reliability systems,' Professor Sourdis explained. 'This approach allows by design devices that combine high reliability with small batteries and state-of-the-art longevity. It is perfect for safety-critical applications such as in implantable medical devices, for example pace-makers or deep brain stimulators that treat Parkinson's disease.'

Most studies that put the spotlight on reliable systems usually focus on fail-safe mechanisms that use a number of redundancy schemes. In this case, sensitive subsystems are seen as 'fail-safe'. In order to assess faults in the sub-system, more energy is used, which in turn cuts the performance of chips. The end result is lost time and wasted energy.

The DESYRE project partners are splitting the System-on-Chip into two distinct areas. The first is extremely resistant to faults, while the second contains fault-prone processing ones. The researchers say the cores on the fault-prone area are interchangeable, and that the task of one core can be transferred to any of the other cores in case of a diagnosed malfunction. The fault-free part of the chip, meanwhile, observes the operation of the fault-prone part by executing 'sanity checks' of the processing cores. They are also responsible for guaranteeing that every core handles an assigned sub-task without any errors.

'It sounds perhaps counterintuitive to design a highly reliable System-on-Chip on the basis of components that may fail, and yet this is exactly what we propose to do,' says Gerard Rauwerda, chief technology officer of Recore Systems B.V. of the Netherlands, one of DESYRE's industrial partners. 'The beauty of the DESYRE approach is that the system continues to do its job reliably, even if one or more cores fail, extending chip longevity.'

This innovative, fault-tolerance device will help cut energy use by at least 10% to 20% and lessen penalties on performance, according to the team.

'People that need implantable medical devices will also benefit from this, as it pays off in a longer battery life and a postponed device replacement without any compromise to reliability,' Professor Sourdis says.

Experts from Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United King dom are members of the DESYRE consortium.

(Ref : http://cordis.europa.eu/fetch?CALLER=EN_NEWS&ACTION=

D&SESSION=&RCN=34396 )


Health Ministry Seeks Increased Budget Allocation To Regularize Medical Devices Sector

With the industry keenly waiting for more sops to the growing medical devices industry in the budget, the Union health ministry has sought increased allocation from the Finance Minister to put in place required manpower and infrastructure as proposed by the pending bill in this regard.

Sources said the Ministry has forwarded its proposals to be included in the Union Budget based on the inputs from the industry. Apart from additional manpower, the Ministry has also suggested setting up of a few medical devices testing laboratories at a cost of Rs.40 crore each. “We are expecting increased allocation in the budget to strengthen the regulatory framework for the medical devices sector,” a senior official disclosed.

Ministry is learnt to have forwarded to the Finance Ministry the demands of the industry to exempt life-saving medical devices and consumables used with devices in special life-saving treatment procedures from the customs duty.

Patient monitoring systems & image guidance systems, pacemakers, image guided system, external defibrillators, ENT surgery products, deep brain stimulation implants, drug pumps, heart lung machines, heart valves, respirators and masks and dialysis equipments have been included among the life-saving devices seeking customs duty exemption, sources said.

Custom duty waiver has also been sought for radiopharmaceuticals used in diagnostics like Imaging and Scanning (PET-& SPECT) & Therapy as many of them like Iodine 131, MIBG 131, Lutetium 177, Yttrium 90, Ge-68-Ga 68 generator, cold Kits for Tc 99m, Rubidium 82 are not manufactured in India, sources said.

The industry has also sought rationalization of duty exemptions to bring in more clarity and less disputes, as different medical devices have either partial or full exemption under various entries in different notifications. Another suggestion was to reduce excise duty from current 10 per cent to nil on locally purchased input for the manufacture of medical equipment, spares, accessories etc.

(Ref : http://pharmabiz.com/NewsDetails.aspx?aid=67766&sid=1)

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