Open Electronics for Medical Devices: State-of-Art and Unique Advantages

Abstract

A wide range of medical devices have significant electronic components. Compared to open-source medical software, open (and open-source) electronic hardware has been less published in peer-reviewed literature. In this review, we explore the developments, significance, and advantages of using open platform electronic hardware for medical devices. Open hardware electronics platforms offer not just shorter development times, reduced costs, and customization; they also offer a key potential advantage which current commercial medical devices lack—seamless data sharing for machine learning and artificial intelligence. We explore how various electronic platforms such as microcontrollers, single board computers, field programmable gate arrays, development boards, and integrated circuits have been used by researchers to design medical devices. Researchers interested in designing low cost, customizable, and innovative medical devices can find references to various easily available electronic components as well as design methodologies to integrate those components for a successful design.

Open Source Hardware, Exploring how Industry Regulation Affects Knowledge Commons Governance: An Exploratory Case Study

“…Existing literature usually assumes that companies, startups, or academic labs manufacture OSH devices (Li & Seering, 2019;Pandey & Vora, 2019). But the emergence of the OSH movement in the medical field led the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), in charge of medical device certification in the United States, to change their policies.…”

“…It allowed decentralized production of respirators, visors, and spare parts as a rapid response to emergency needs (Maia Chagas, Molloy, Prieto-Godino, & Baden, 2020). Furthermore, making hardware design available under an open-source license allows anyone to contribute and improve the device, thus accelerating innovation at a fraction of the cost (Pandey & Vora, 2019;Pearce, 2015b;Williams, Gibb, & Weekly, 2012).…”

“…The expected benefits of OSH are numerous: reduced cost of R&D, a faster innovation cycle, lower legal fees, better product quality, lower cost of repair, and an ethical bonus for the brand (Gibb & Abadie, 2014;Gibney, 2016). However, OSH is a relatively new movement, and the number of publications in the peer-reviewed literature is inevitably lower than the number of ongoing projects that are still in early phases (Pandey & Vora, 2019). The added value compared to the proprietary model is not yet fully understood (Huang, 2015).…”

Analysis of Single Board Architectures Integrating Sensors Technologies

“…The importance of single board architectures integrating sensors technologies and their applications has led to different tutorials, overviews, reviews and surveys papers being reported in the literature, included on-line publications, white papers, webinars and different aspects, topics and points of view: SoC technologies, process capacity, characteristics, power and number of I/O, in terms of cost, control flexibility, among others. In this sense SBAs and ISTs for visual sensor networks are revised and analyzed in [ 87 , 88 ], transport technologies and related applications in [ 89 , 90 ] including tracking, monitoring and lighting in [ 91 , 92 , 93 , 94 , 95 , 96 , 97 , 98 ], SBAs and ISTs for smart cities applications in [ 99 , 100 ], education and research projects in [ 101 , 102 , 103 , 104 , 105 ], medical devices in [ 106 , 107 , 108 ], smart and advanced sensors in [ 109 , 110 , 111 , 112 , 113 ], including wireless sensors [ 114 ], IoT applications in [ 115 , 116 , 117 , 118 ], smart home in [ 119 , 120 , 121 , 122 ], energy in [ 123 , 124 , 125 ], engineering education in [ 126 , 127 , 128 ], Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV), Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles (FCEV) and Plug-in-Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV) in [ 129 ,…”

Linear Ultrasound Transmitter Based on Transformer with Improved Saturation Performance

“…Ultrasound-based techniques and systems are nowadays exploited in several very different areas. Biomedical investigations [1][2][3][4][5], non-destructive tests (NDT) [6][7][8], ultrasound levitation [9], nuclear safety [10], industrial monitoring of production processes [11][12][13], robotics [14], Doppler investigations [15], personal identification [16], and oil industry [17] are just a few examples of the employments that confirm the widespread presence of ultrasounds in our modern world. Although high-end systems, like clinical or research echograph [18][19][20], employ hundreds of independent ultrasound channels and require specific frond-end electronics [21,22], most of the aforementioned applications are based on a single ultrasound channel, and are preferably realized through discrete electronic devices.…”