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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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