DesignMED Resources: Personal and Home Healthcare

TI's Consumer Medical Applications Guide
Features technical and product information for a variety of home healthcare applications, including: heart rate/fitness monitoring systems, blood glucose and other diagnostic meters, blood pressure monitors and digital thermometers.

ADI Product How-To: Digital Isolator Simplifies USB Isolation in Medical and Industrial Applications
This article discusses various ways of applying isolation with USB. One described method allows for simple, inexpensive isolation of peripheral devices, especially including the D+ and D- lines.

Analog and Digital ICs for Ultrasound
See how Texas Instruments' analog and digital ICs help ultrasound designers increase image quality and reduce power consumption in portable to high-end ultrasound systems.

Full-Featured Pedometer Design Realized with 3-Axis Digital Accelerometer
This article from ADI, based on a study of the characteristics of each step a person takes, describes a reference design using a three-axis accelerometer in a full-featured pedometer that can recognize and count steps, and also measure distance, speed, and—to an extent—calories burned.

Ventilation Application Sheet
Read how Texas Instruments' low-power and broad-appeal microprocessors and other technology control options help you meet all your ventilation equipment needs, as well as other vital medical system needs, in the Ventilation Application Sheet.

ADI White Paper: Detecting Human Falls with a 3-Axis Digital Accelerometer
The development of devices for detection and prediction of all types of falls has become a hot topic. Advances in MEMS acceleration sensors make it possible to design fall detectors based on a three-axis integrated MEMS accelerometer. This article, based on research into the principles of fall detection for an individual body, proposes a new solution for detecting falls.

Infusion Pump Application Sheet
Read how Texas Instruments' low-power and broad-appeal microprocessors and other technology control options help you meet all your infusion pump equipment needs, as well as other vital medical system needs, in the Infusion Pump Application Sheet.

Product: SHARC® 2147x Series Processors: Floating Point Precision Powers Portable Continuous Wave Doppler Processing
This whitepaper covers the use of portable ultrasound devices, the processing techniques used, and the way in which SHARC 2147x series of digital-signal processors provide the necessary functionality with the lowest power consumption level.

"Rules of the Road" white paper from ADI for High-Speed Differential ADC Drivers
Applications engineers are constantly bombarded with questions about driving high-speed ADCs with differential inputs. Selecting the right ADC driver and configuration can be challenging. To make the design of robust ADC circuits somewhat easier, we've compiled a set of common "road hazards" and solutions.

TI's New Medical Applications Guide
TI's new Medical Applications Guide helps you get your medical equipment design to market faster with system block diagrams for a broad range of medical electronics, component selection tables, device details and information about development tools and evaluation modules.

Complete Analog Front End for ECG/EEG
The eight-channel, 24-bit ADS1298 is the first in a family of fully integrated analog front ends (AFES) for patient monitoring, portable and high-end ECG and EEG.

Medical Dev Kit - Pulse Oximeter Analog Front End Module Demo
The TMDXMDKPO8328 Pulse Oximeter (PO or SpO2) Analog Front End (AFE) module which consists of the PO AFE module, a a processor board (C5515 DSP evaluation module), and a set of collateral and C5515 based application sample code to implement the PO application.

Flexible Design, Low Power For Ultrasound Systems
See how Texas Instruments' analog and digital ICs help ultrasound designers increase image quality and reduce power consumption in portable to high-end ultrasound systems.

Training: Market Drivers and Technology Enablers for Wireless Connectivity in Medical
This session will explore low power wireless technologies including Zigbee, 802.15.4, WLAN, RFID. Also discussed will be the existing and potential spectrums used for the medical space and their applicability for different applications. Learn how these technologies compare by looking at several different attributes such as Data Rate, Range, Power Consumption, Packet Error Rate, Interference Tolerance, Network Topologies, and relative cost. Some various medical examples will be shown where wireless technologies are used.

Training: Telehealth - Trends, Challenges and Solutions
Telehealth enables independent elderly living, reduces healthcare cost and improves access to healthcare services. It has been gaining tremendous momentum in the recent years due to the ongoing policy and infrastructure changes. This session will present the overview of telehealth systems and relevant technologies. Specifically, we will look into the different components of a telehealth system design: processor, connectivity, power management and user interface. Solutions to enhance performance, improve connectivity, extends battery run time and enable rich user experience will be proposed.

The Incredible Versatile Op Amp
As this paper from ADI shows us, Op amps are used in all aspects of medical equipment design, from dc to video, and from low level precision input to high power output. They buffer and smooth the inputs and outputs of data converters. Newer amplifiers handle differential signals, control gain, and have internal supplies to extend their signal range.

Smart Drivers Reduce Energy Use and PCB Clutter in Portable Systems
Portable system power reduction strategies such as improved power-management devices and processor partitioning are nearing a limit. New strategies that offload simple tasks to a smart driver can provide greater power reduction and simplify layout, as depicted in this paper from ADI.

Intelligent Mixed Signal FPGAs in Portable Medical Devices
Home-based and consumer medical devices have been traditionally used for testing and monitoring. This includes digital blood pressure meters, blood gas meters, and blood glucose meters. This article shows some simple methods to enhance the control while reducing power in your medical device.

SmartFusion in Clinical Applications: Hemodialysis Machine
Clinical medical devices, such as patient monitors, blood analyzers, and dialysis machines, are microcontroller/microprocessor based electro-mechanical instruments that use a common set of building blocks. These blocks include power/battery control, a user interface (keypad, LCD monitor, and audio control), flash or EEPROM for data logging, and pump/motor control. Actel's Fusion mixed-signal FPGA can handle many of these functions in one IC, as is detailed by this paper.

Solutions for the Medical Equipment Market
This paper details the many advantages of using an FPGA in the design of a medical electronics system.

Actel IGLOO Low-Power Flash FPGAs
As shown in this literature, the Actel IGLOO families, which include IGLOO/e, IGLOO nano, and IGLOO PLUS devices, are reprogrammable, full-featured flash FPGAs designed to meet the demanding power and area requirements of today's portable and power-conscious medical electronics.

Incredible Shrinking Medical Devices
Increasing healthcare costs, the prevalence of chronic diseases, an aging "baby boomer" community, and large emerging markets in countries such as China, India, and Brazil, are creating tremendous demand for affordable, robust, and reliable medical devices. In turn, medical device designers are exploring new technologies to improve the diagnostic and monitoring capabilities of next-generation devices. These changing features and requirements demand complex functionality in a small footprint, low power, high accuracy, and reliable operation.

Putting Low Power and Flexibility Where It Matters Most: Handheld Portable Applications
The world is getting more excited about the increasing opportunity that electronics integration and mobility brings. This has altered electronics design choices and decisions upstream. Expensive ASICs or custom ICs don't work in markets where cost is a factor, but the ability to hit tight market windows and adapt to changing technology standards is paramount. This paradigm shift puts the design imperative on Actel's flash-based FPGAs, which offer both low power capability and system-design flexibility to meet time-to-market demands and changing user requirements and standards.

Actel SmartFusion: Intelligent, Innovative Integration
The whole point of an FPGA is flexibility. We could also mention integration. But then there is cost savings. So the whole point of an FPGA is flexibility, integration and cost savings. Yet there is also power reduction. And then there's security… All these advantages (and others besides) have made FPGAs very popular over the years. Actel's family of SmartFusion chips takes all the traditional advantages of FPGAs and combines them with equally flexible analog circuitry and the world's most popular embedded processor.

Design Made Easy With Mixed-Signal FPGAs and State of the Art Software Tools
Since the early years of embedded processor design and FPGA design, silicon advancement and design techniques for each have evolved independently. This leads to two distinct design flows, styles, and engineering disciplines. The relatively recent addition of mixed‐signal FPGAs adds the complexity of analog into the mix. This paper examines the evolution path for FPGAs with embedded processors, and the design tools that support them, and considers whether engineers need to evolve their techniques to accommodate the integrated silicon or whether they can continue to manage their boundaries at the silicon level instead of the board level.

Actel SmartFusion, the Intelligent Mixed Signal FPGA
SmartFusion intelligent mixed signal FPGAs are the only devices that integrate an FPGA, an ARM Cortex-M3 processor, and programmable analog, offering full customization, IP protection, and ease-of-use. Based on Actel's proprietary flash process, SmartFusion devices are suited for hardware and embedded medical designers who need a true SoC that gives more flexibility than traditional fixed-function microcontrollers without the excessive cost of soft processor cores on traditional FPGAs.

Chip Scale Packaging Helps Portable Medical Devices Save Size and Weight
Wafer-level chip scale packages are allowing designers of portable healthcare equipment—such as invasive sensing, medical implants, and disposable monitors—to reduce size and power requirements. This whitepaper will show you how you can take advantage of this technology.

Technology for Life: Medical Solutions
This design guide walks you through all the various aspects of medical system design. Developed by Freescale Semiconductor, it's a great starting point for any systems engineer.