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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