Wireless Charging and Next-Generation Batteries Enable Smaller Medical Devices
Miniaturized medical devices offer many benefits, from making procedures less invasive to enabling new treatments. It’s why smaller, smarter devices are the holy grail of medical device design and manufacturing. Yet making medical devices smaller and smarter requires technology advancements to ensure devices are effective as their size shrinks: technology advancements like next-generation wireless power and batteries for medical devices.
Solid State Batteries
Historically, power and energy needs limited how small implantable medical devices could be. Now, breakthrough power and energy innovations are accelerating medical device miniaturization. Solid state batteries are a huge technological advancement. They’re smaller and safer than traditional batteries because they use solid electrolytes and electrodes instead of the liquid or polymer gel electrolytes traditionally used in lithium-ion batteries. With solid state batteries, device makers can have a small form factor, long life, low leakage, and rechargeability; device makers like Lura Health, who chose Ilika’s new Stereax M300 stacked solid state battery to power their tiny oral sensor.
Smaller batteries come with another challenge: smaller capacity to power devices, deliver treatments, and collect and send data, such as for an implantable monitoring and diagnostic device. That’s where Resonant Link’s first-of-its-kind wireless power coil structure really delivers, as Lura Health discovered.
10x Faster Charging
Resonant Link’s wireless power systems use a breakthrough coil design called a multi-layer self-resonant structure (MSRS), which delivers up to 10x better performance than conventional wireless. With Resonant Link, devices can be quickly, safely, and wirelessly powered, and data and communications transfer happens seamlessly and securely over the power link, as opposed to Bluetooth. This means device makers can get rid of components like extra antennae, enabling even smaller devices, while ensuring fast, safe, and seamless power and communications. What’s more, Resonant Link’s technology can make active devices passive, like Paradromics’ battery-less brain-computer interface, which is intended for all day, everyday use.
When asked about the significance of Resonant Link’s wireless power capabilities for his company’s miniature oral sensor, Daniel Weinstein, CEO of Lura Health, said: “We need it as small as possible, no heat generation, as efficient as possible, as fast as possible. We’re thoroughly convinced that’s the only way in the world that we could have done it.”
Help More People Live Better Lives
From Lura Health’s diagnostic sensor aimed at redefining preventative care to Opto Biosystems’ minimally-invasive, implantable neurotechnology, medical device companies are leveraging wireless power, recharging, and next-generation medical device batteries to deliver new and improved medical treatments and help more people live better lives. These technologies open up tremendous potential for implantable medical devices like pacemakers, cochlear implants, brain-computer interfaces, and more.
We’re humbled to be working with medical device battery technology leaders like Resonetics and Cirtec Medical to miniaturize medical device power and energy capabilities and fuel life-changing innovations. Contact us today to see how the world’s smallest and fastest wireless power can make your tiny device a reality.
