Societal impact

With an increasingly aging population, the (cost) effective treatment of chronic diseases is becoming increasingly important to curb the burden of the cost of healthcare. It is widely recognized that many chronic diseases find their roots in inflammatory abnormalities, often involving an over active immune system.

Today, the treatment of chronic autoimmune related diseases with biological cytokine suppressors places a heavy impact on our healthcare systems. Therapies with modern biological compounds such as Etanercept, Adalimumab, and Infliximab cost between $15,000 and $25,000 a year per patient, and even these are effective in only 40% of the cases.

The prospect of a therapy that can be administered with less side effects, lower total costs and with higher efficacy is daunting. Based on the preliminary results obtained so far, it is even justified to consider bioelectronic medicines not only as a last resort, but as a second or first line of therapy.

 

Relevance for the Electronic Components and Systems (ECS) industry

The prospect of bioelectronic medicines that can be deployed on a large scale for the treatment of a wide variety of chronic diseases poses an enormous opportunity for the electronic industry with its expertise and miniaturization, assembly, encapsulation, low power processing, wireless communication and high volume low-cost manufacturing. To enable this, the ECS industry will need to take the initiative in the development of the next generation of implantable neuromodulator devices that will be:

• Highly miniaturized to that the can be precisely delivered on target nerves with minimally invasive procedures;

• Specific to that the precisely target specific groups of neurons (fascicles) with minimal side effects;

• Wirelessly powered by RF, ultrasound or energy harvesting;

• Active only when needed through closed loop operation.

 

Enabling technology platforms

The development of the emerging field of bioelectronic medicines can be significantly accelerated by the development of a number of open technology platforms that address common technological challenges that will serve a variety of bioelectronic medicine devices. These include platforms for:

• Miniaturization of complex heterogeneous systems to allow for minimally invasive device delivery on the target nerve;

• Power management covering storage (battery or capacitor) and remote charging (inductive, ultrasound, scavenging);

• Secure communication;

• Low-power edge AI computing for autonomous closed loop operation;

• Encapsulation in relation to reliability, bio-stability, weight, manufacturability and cost.​