Feds Help Finance Creation of Implantable Body Antenna for ‘Long-term Patient Monitoring’

Feds Help Finance Creation of Implantable Body Antenna for ‘Long-term Patient Monitoring’

NSF provided $5,070 to test devices

BY:  Elizabeth Harrington May 27, 2015 2:35 pm

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is helping fund the creation of an implantable antenna for health care, which could be used for “long-term patient monitoring.”

The government has so far given $5,070 for a graduate fellowship to work on the project, which begins June 1.

The project is being financed in collaboration with the National Research Foundation of Korea to create a high frequency antenna that can be permanently implanted under a person’s skin.

“Antennas operating near or inside the human body are important for a number of applications, including healthcare,” a grant for the project said. “Implantable medical devices such as cardiac pacemakers and retinal implants are a growing feature of modern healthcare, and implantable antennas for these devices are necessary to monitor battery level and device health, to upload and download data used in patient monitoring, and more.”

The grant said that an implantable device could be used for “long-term patient monitoring” and “biometric tracking,” or using technology to verify a person’s identity.

“Despite their potential use in long-term patient monitoring and wireless biometric tracking there is limited research on [Ultra High Frequency] UHF [radio-frequency identification] RFID for insertion in high-loss human body environments,” the grant said. “This research will greatly benefit from procedures already in place at Dr. You Chung Chung’s antenna lab at Daegu University in Daegu, Korea.”

The project will test different types of ultra high frequency antenna designs that can be “inserted under the skin for a permanent application.”

“Ultra High Frequency (UHF) RFID tag antennas are printed using conductive ink and have found increased applications due to advantages such as minimal cost, low maintenance, good tag read range, and ability to operate without an integrated battery,” the grant said.

Funding is being distributed through the NSF’s East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes (EAPSI) for U.S. Graduate Students.

Requests for comment from the NSF were not returned.


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