Medical device design from a telecommunications perspective
Abstract
The goal of any medical device is to transfer information from the patient through a medium or channel to the health care worker. The ability of a device to do this effectively depends on its extraction of the relevant information from the environment. Examples range from MRI machines mapping the tissues of a patient by reading the electromagnetic properties of the body, to the simple thermometer which takes a patient’s temperature based on the expansion of a metal due to heat.
A medical device can only be designed with an understanding of the bone, muscle and fat of the body through which the patient’s condition is transmitted. The channel forms the question that the medical device answers to unlock valuable information.
The wireless communication industry has pioneered many techniques for the transfer of data efficiently in a wide variety of situations. As a result there is a wealth of information which combines the deterministic and statistical properties of the channel to form accurate models upon which the technology is based.
This paper will discuss some of the fundamental concepts of channel modeling used in telecommunications and how they could apply to environments encountered in the medical profession.
