MEMS Industry Group explores MEMS in quality of life/medical apps

PITTSBURGH, USA: MEMS Industry Group (MIG) will host a daylong conference examining the ways in which micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS)—tiny micro-machines that provide intelligent sensing and actuation—are promoting better Quality of Life (QoL) through advanced biomedical and healthcare applications.

From tissue engineering, organ-assist devices and “personalized” drug-delivery to intelligent patient-monitoring systems and a smartphone platform that can be used to predict an influenza epidemic, MIG has tapped top innovators in biomedicine to explore the MEMS connection to a host of life-enhancing and life-saving QoL applications.

“MEMS devices are intelligent, extremely small, and enable a high degree of interactivity with the environment. Such attributes have made MEMS wildly successful in video games, smartphones and other consumer devices. They also make this technology an excellent match for new classes of biomedical applications,” explained Karen Lightman, Microtech QoL Symposia chair and MD of MEMS Industry Group. “As an industry group furthering the commercialization of MEMS, we are tremendously proud and excited to present the ways in which MEMS-based applications will improve the quality of life of humankind.”

The MIG Special Symposia—Microtech QoL for Quality of Life and Medical Applications feature:

* Introduction and Closing Remarks by Karen Lightman, managing director of MEMS Industry Group;
* MEMS in Healthcare—The Only Limit Is Imagination by Tom O'Dwyer, director of technology for Analog Devices’ Healthcare Group;
* BioMEMS Technology for Artificial Organs by Dr. Jeffrey Borenstein, distinguished member of the technical staff at Charles Stark Draper Laboratory;
* Quality of Life through Intelligent Monitoring by Mark Diperri, senior field applications engineer at Freescale Semiconductor;
* MEMS in QoL Devices by closing keynote speaker Brian Wirth, global product manager at GE Measurement & Control Solutions.
* Modeling Objective Quality of Life using Smartphone Sensors by Anmol Madan, cofounder of ginger.io;
* Total Artificial Heart Utilizes MEMS Technology by Donna Sandfox, product manager, MEMS Sensors at Omron Electronic Components;
* Medical Implant Devices, MEMS and Quality of Life: Lessons from Cardiovascular Devices: Stents, VADs and the Total Artificial Heart by opening keynote speaker Dr. Marvin Slepian, co-founder, chairman, chief scientific and medical officer at SynCardia Systems; and,
* Convergence of MEMS, Microfluidics, and Semiconductor Processing in Life Sciences with Dr. Jeffrey Borenstein, distinguished member of the technical staff at Charles Stark Draper Laboratory; Rich Brossart, senior marketing director at SVTC
Technologies; Dr. Randy Goodall, president and CEO of NanoMedical Systems; and Steve Wilcenski, president of MEMSCAP.

The MIG Special Symposia will take place Tuesday, June 14, 10:30 am-4:30 pm, Hynes Convention Center, Boston.