In-Body Microgenerator Wins Emerging Technology Award

zarlink

An in-body microgenerator harvests energy from differential pressure in the heart's chambers.

As the end of another year rapidly approaches, we're bombarded with a multitude of 'Best of' lists and awards announcements. Although we unfortunately don't have the space or time to cover all of the year's award winners, this one caught our attention because we covered it earlier this year:  Zarlink Semiconductor (Ottawa, Canada) announced that the Self-energizing Implantable Medical Microsystem (SIMM) microgenerator, for which it serves as the lead, was recently honored with the Emerging Technology Award at the Institution of Engineering and Technology's Innovation Awards 2009 in London.The SIMM in-body microgenerator is designed to augment battery power--and possibly someday replace it entirely--in pacemakers and ICDs. To do so, it employs differential pressure in the heart's chambers to harvest energy as a power source. Incorporating this energy-harvesting capability would thus free up internal real estate in the cardiac implant to allow for greater functionality without increasing the overall implant package size."The driver for us was to allow more functionality to be incorporated into the pacemaker by making the battery smaller and being able to drive more power into the pacemaker to power extra functions and therapies," Martin McHugh, business development manager for Zarlink's Advanced Packaging group and SIMM project coordinator, told MPMN earlier this year.Read more about this award-winning emerging technology and another alternative implant power source that we found newsworthy in 2009.