Domestic medical equipment looks forward to "Chinese chips"

The new medical reform, which aims to enable more people to get better health care at a cheaper price, requires the participation of all sectors of society, and information technology plays a very important role in it.

"There are two key words in the new medical reform: first, the focus of medical care has been changed from the past focus on disease to the focus on health, and the strategic focus has been shifted to prevention and health care; second, the focus has been shifted to primary care, township and community care, so that more people can enjoy medical services. Both of these focuses provide huge opportunities for the electronic information industry." Dr. Wang Xiaoqing, an expert from the Expert Committee of the China Medical Device Industry Association, said in an interview with a reporter from China Electronics News. In 2009, the state finance allocated 850 billion yuan to promote the new medical reform, with the goal of solving the problems of difficulty and high cost of seeing a doctor, which not only involve medical management and model issues, but also technology and service issues.

Medical equipment "humanization" needs "electronics" to help

Providing more comprehensive and precise testing and achieving more integrated, personalized and accurate diagnosis will be the focus of competition in future medical care.

Wang Xiaoqing said that almost all medical equipment, from consumer medical equipment to diagnostic and patient testing and treatment equipment to medical imaging, cannot do without electronic technology. IT costs account for more than 10% or even more of the cost of medical equipment. The annual inspection of the China Medical Instrument Industry Association shows that in CT medical imaging equipment, electronic products account for 11% of the total cost; in medical materials such as catheters, electronic components and materials account for more than 40%.

Wang Lei, a researcher of the Hundred Talents Program at the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said in an interview with China Electronics News: "With the aging of the population, the consumer demand for medical electronics is also showing a sharp growth trend: the mobile medical electronics consumer market is expected to reach US$15 billion in 2011, and the Chinese market will reach US$1.5 billion."

GE Healthcare, Siemens, and Philips are the world's largest suppliers of complete medical equipment and solutions. Their views reflect the changes in the needs of complete medical equipment suppliers. "At present, medical equipment innovation is developing in the direction of low cost, high quality, and high penetration rate. How to achieve more humane and portable has become the focus of medical equipment competition." Dai Ying, chief technology officer of GE Healthcare Greater China, told reporters. He cited the example of portable ultrasound equipment. Patients who have gone to the hospital for B-ultrasound examinations have a deep understanding of the cumbersome examination process: find a doctor to issue a test order, then go to the B-ultrasound room to queue for examination, and then run back to the doctor to see the results after the examination. But if there is a portable B-ultrasound device the size of a mobile phone, the doctor can use it directly to examine the patient's affected area like using a stethoscope, and get the results of the examination. Similarly, the operating interface of large CT machines in the past was separated from the equipment. Doctors needed to place the patient and then run to another room to operate. But if there is an integrated operating system, doctors do not need to run around, which simplifies the medical process.

Mobility, Internet and connectivity are the focus

In the portable medical market, mobility, interconnection and connectivity will be the development trend of medical electronics.

These changes in the medical field have put forward higher requirements for electronic technology. Zhang Hui, associate professor of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the School of Medicine of Tsinghua University, believes that in the past, the focus of medical testing equipment was on structural and functional issues, and future medical equipment must provide more non-structural and non-functional prediction and detection information. He emphasized: "Traditional analog and separation logic devices are increasingly unable to meet the requirements of system design. Higher integration and newer system architectures can meet user needs." In some occasions where MCU cannot meet the needs, FPGA devices make complex control and high-density digital signal processing possible. This system-level digital technology is promoting the innovation of medical imaging equipment. Zhang Hui introduced that it is precisely with such system-level innovation that the positron emission tomography (PET) equipment, which was originally as big as a room, can be turned into a portable desktop device.

Texas Instruments Senior Marketing Engineer Guo Jun said: In most medical devices, the actual physiological signal is an analog signal, which needs to be processed by signal conditioning technologies such as amplification and filtering before it can be detected, monitored or displayed. Therefore, high-performance analog front-end products must have the characteristics of low noise, low power consumption and high density.

Currently, Freescale Semiconductor's solutions in the medical field are mainly focused on the portable medical market. Freescale Semiconductor Marketing Manager Liu Congxiong believes that mobility, interconnection and connectivity will be the main development trends of medical electronics.

"China Chip" has broad space for innovation

If Chinese medical chip companies can provide more and better solutions, they will be able to promote innovation in China's medical system equipment.

China is a country with a large demand for medical equipment, but the domestic market is dominated by foreign equipment. Compared with foreign medical equipment, local manufacturers do not have many truly innovative things. China's medical equipment industry needs to seize the opportunity of the country's promotion of the new medical reform to comprehensively enhance its competitiveness. Wang Xiaoqing believes that the research and development of medical equipment mainly includes three levels: method research and development, clinical research and development, and engineering research and development. The research and development of methods and clinical research and development has greater room for breakthroughs. At present, these two fields are becoming the main battlefields for competition among countries. The research and development of China's medical equipment industry should work harder in these two dimensions.

As for the improvement of the level of Chinese medical equipment, domestic medical electronics has a long way to go, because most medical equipment currently runs on foreign chips. Wang Lei said: "A few foreign chip companies have entered the field of mobile medical chips, but there are no dedicated mobile medical chips in China."

Although there are hundreds of chip design companies in China, not many of them really pay attention to and enter the medical chip market. Guo Runxuan of Beijing Kuntian Microelectronics Technology Co., Ltd. told China Electronics News: "Market size and market demand are two important indicators that chip companies pay attention to. Since the demand in many medical sub-sectors lacks large-scale market support, many chip design companies are deterred."

However, medical system chips have revolutionary significance for the innovation of the entire medical equipment market. The reason why medical equipment purchased by Chinese hospitals is expensive is that most medical equipment cannot be manufactured in China. Once China can produce medical equipment on its own, foreign equipment will immediately drop in price. If Chinese medical chips can provide more and better solutions, it will undoubtedly accelerate the innovation of Chinese medical system equipment companies and significantly reduce the price of medical equipment, which will truly benefit the people.

The Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology and the Medical Robotics and Minimally Invasive Surgical Instruments Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences are conducting research on two electrophysiological signal acquisition analog front-end chips and power management chips with completely independent intellectual property rights. The cost price of basic monitoring and detection equipment for rural health clinics manufactured by the Chinese Academy of Sciences based on such system chips is only half of that of foreign equipment. At present, the Chinese Academy of Sciences is using the technical advantages of "cloud" and "end" to build a public service platform for health technology. So far, it has been applied in 400 villages in 9 provinces across the country. Their goal next year is to enter 10,000 to 20,000 villages, and the goal after 5 years is to fully promote it to 630,000 villages.

The electrophysiological medical chip they make is just a small boat in the vast ocean of medical chips. The medical electronics market has many sub-sectors that expect more Chinese chip design companies to participate.