07-02-2013, 04:02 PM
A Framework for BIOELECTRONICS Discovery and Innovation
[attachment=50060]
Motivation
There is an opportunity for dramatically increased synergy between electronics and biology, fostered by the march of electronics technologies to the atomic scale and rapid advances in system, cell, and molecular biology. In the next decade, it may become possible to restore vision or reverse the effects of spinal cord injury or disease; for a lab-on-a-chip to allow medical diagnoses without a clinic or instantaneous biological agent detection. Bioelectronics is the discipline resulting from the convergence of biology and electronics and it has the potential to significantly impact many areas important to the nation’s economy and well-being, including healthcare and medicine, homeland security, forensics, and protecting the environment and the food supply. Not only can advances in electronics impact biology and medicine, but conversely understanding biology may provide powerful insights into efficient assembly processes, devices, and architectures for nanoelectronics technologies, as physical limits of existing technologies are approached. This report develops the thesis that advances in bioelectronics can offer new and improved methods and tools while simultaneously reducing their costs, due to the continuing exponential gains in functionality-per-unit-cost in nanoelectronics (aka Moore’s Lawa). These gains drove the cost per transistor down by a factor of one million between 1970 and 2008 (for comparison, over the same period, the average cost of a new car rose from $3,900 to $26,000) and enabled unprecedented increases in productivity.
Research Challenges and Opportunities
Realizing the promise of bioelectronics requires research that crosses disciplines, such as electrical engineering, biology, chemistry, physics, and materials science. Challenges and opportunities were discussed at a roundtable in November 2008 that brought together experts from industry, government, and academia, including representatives from IBM, Intel, Texas Instruments, Tokyo Electron Ltd.
Observations and Recommendations
The application of electronics technology to biology and medicine is not new. Examples include pacemakers and virtually the entire medical imaging industry. Research that enabled these applications grew out of many disciplines of science and engineering; however, recently, the term “bioelectronics” is being used more widely to describe this multidisciplinary field. A survey of publications that use the term in the title or abstract captures on a fraction of the actual research, but suggests that the center of activity is in Europe (43 percent of publications), followed by Asia (23 percent) and the United States (20 percent). With outstanding research expertise in both biomedicine and semiconductors, the United States is in a position to become a leader in the field with appropriate and directed investments in the areas outlined in this report.
Science and technology experts representing the nano-electronics and biotechnology communities provided inputs for this report. Collectively, the participants identified a wide range of opportunities and challenges for the field, which are listed in the table below. The strategic drivers that were most frequently cited were: disease detection, disease prevention, and prosthetics. The technologies and devices that will enable applications in these areas will impact other vital areas, such as homeland and national security, forensics, and the environment. Progress in all of these sectors requires innovation in crosscutting areas, including measurement and characterization, fabrication, and power sources.
Introduction
Electronic devices have been revolutionizing biology and medicine over the past several generations. The development of the electrocardiograph (i.e., recording the electrical activity of the heart) approximately 100 years ago was one of the defining moments that helped establish the field of cardiology and is now an integral part of clinical practice [1]. Today, defibrillators are implanted at a rate of 160,000 per year in the US alone to restore proper electrical activity to diseased hearts, once again changing the practice of medicine and creating a new market worth $5 billion per year [2]. Electronic systems have also been critical to the development of the field of radiology, which has evolved from a single modality (X-ray) to include magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), computed tomography (CT), and positron emission tomography (PET), among others. MRI has made possible the imaging of soft tissue to help treat physical injuries. CT now allows 3D visualization of anatomical features, facilitating surgical planning. The medical imaging equipment market is expected to be worth $11.4 billion by 2012 [3]. In short, the application of electronics to medicine has transformed medical practice and will continue to do so.
Research Activity
The application of electronics technology to biology and medicine is not new, however research activity in this convergent field is growing rapidly. A proxy for activity, especially in academia, is publications. In order to assess bioelectronics research activity, an analysis of publications was made using the Science Citation Index Expanded™ (SCIE), available through the Web of Science®. The SCIE includes information from more than 10,000 of the world's leading scholarly science and technical journals in more than 100 disciplines. It also contains papers from over 110,000 conference proceedings. The database is updated weekly and contains citations dating back to 1900. Publications that contained the word ‘bioelectronic’ or ‘bioelectronics’ in their title or abstract were identified. The total number of such papers is 548, published from 1912 through January 2009. It should be noted that the absolute number of publications on bioelectronic topics (without using the term bioelectronics in the title or abstract) is undoubtedly much larger; however, this analysis provides a sample that is believed to be representative of the related activities in the field.
Bioelectronics: A Taxonomy
The first reference to bioelectronics, published in 1912, focused on measurement of electrical signals generated by the body, which is the basis of the electrocardiogram. In the 1960s two new trends in bioelectronics began to appear. One trend, enabled by the invention of the transistor, centered on the development of implantable electronic devices and systems to stimulate organs, e.g., the pacemaker. In the same time frame, fundamental studies were beginning to be reported on electron transfer in electrochemical reactions. Today, these three areas of endeavor are converging to enable multi-signal recording and stimulation at the cell level, i.e., there is a kind of physical scaling law that is moving over time from the organ level toward cellular dimensions. At the same time, studies at the molecular level are leading to new understanding of cell performance. The analogy with nanoelectronics is striking; top-down scaling is being abetted by device design from the atomic level.
[attachment=50060]
Motivation
There is an opportunity for dramatically increased synergy between electronics and biology, fostered by the march of electronics technologies to the atomic scale and rapid advances in system, cell, and molecular biology. In the next decade, it may become possible to restore vision or reverse the effects of spinal cord injury or disease; for a lab-on-a-chip to allow medical diagnoses without a clinic or instantaneous biological agent detection. Bioelectronics is the discipline resulting from the convergence of biology and electronics and it has the potential to significantly impact many areas important to the nation’s economy and well-being, including healthcare and medicine, homeland security, forensics, and protecting the environment and the food supply. Not only can advances in electronics impact biology and medicine, but conversely understanding biology may provide powerful insights into efficient assembly processes, devices, and architectures for nanoelectronics technologies, as physical limits of existing technologies are approached. This report develops the thesis that advances in bioelectronics can offer new and improved methods and tools while simultaneously reducing their costs, due to the continuing exponential gains in functionality-per-unit-cost in nanoelectronics (aka Moore’s Lawa). These gains drove the cost per transistor down by a factor of one million between 1970 and 2008 (for comparison, over the same period, the average cost of a new car rose from $3,900 to $26,000) and enabled unprecedented increases in productivity.
Research Challenges and Opportunities
Realizing the promise of bioelectronics requires research that crosses disciplines, such as electrical engineering, biology, chemistry, physics, and materials science. Challenges and opportunities were discussed at a roundtable in November 2008 that brought together experts from industry, government, and academia, including representatives from IBM, Intel, Texas Instruments, Tokyo Electron Ltd.
Observations and Recommendations
The application of electronics technology to biology and medicine is not new. Examples include pacemakers and virtually the entire medical imaging industry. Research that enabled these applications grew out of many disciplines of science and engineering; however, recently, the term “bioelectronics” is being used more widely to describe this multidisciplinary field. A survey of publications that use the term in the title or abstract captures on a fraction of the actual research, but suggests that the center of activity is in Europe (43 percent of publications), followed by Asia (23 percent) and the United States (20 percent). With outstanding research expertise in both biomedicine and semiconductors, the United States is in a position to become a leader in the field with appropriate and directed investments in the areas outlined in this report.
Science and technology experts representing the nano-electronics and biotechnology communities provided inputs for this report. Collectively, the participants identified a wide range of opportunities and challenges for the field, which are listed in the table below. The strategic drivers that were most frequently cited were: disease detection, disease prevention, and prosthetics. The technologies and devices that will enable applications in these areas will impact other vital areas, such as homeland and national security, forensics, and the environment. Progress in all of these sectors requires innovation in crosscutting areas, including measurement and characterization, fabrication, and power sources.
Introduction
Electronic devices have been revolutionizing biology and medicine over the past several generations. The development of the electrocardiograph (i.e., recording the electrical activity of the heart) approximately 100 years ago was one of the defining moments that helped establish the field of cardiology and is now an integral part of clinical practice [1]. Today, defibrillators are implanted at a rate of 160,000 per year in the US alone to restore proper electrical activity to diseased hearts, once again changing the practice of medicine and creating a new market worth $5 billion per year [2]. Electronic systems have also been critical to the development of the field of radiology, which has evolved from a single modality (X-ray) to include magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), computed tomography (CT), and positron emission tomography (PET), among others. MRI has made possible the imaging of soft tissue to help treat physical injuries. CT now allows 3D visualization of anatomical features, facilitating surgical planning. The medical imaging equipment market is expected to be worth $11.4 billion by 2012 [3]. In short, the application of electronics to medicine has transformed medical practice and will continue to do so.
Research Activity
The application of electronics technology to biology and medicine is not new, however research activity in this convergent field is growing rapidly. A proxy for activity, especially in academia, is publications. In order to assess bioelectronics research activity, an analysis of publications was made using the Science Citation Index Expanded™ (SCIE), available through the Web of Science®. The SCIE includes information from more than 10,000 of the world's leading scholarly science and technical journals in more than 100 disciplines. It also contains papers from over 110,000 conference proceedings. The database is updated weekly and contains citations dating back to 1900. Publications that contained the word ‘bioelectronic’ or ‘bioelectronics’ in their title or abstract were identified. The total number of such papers is 548, published from 1912 through January 2009. It should be noted that the absolute number of publications on bioelectronic topics (without using the term bioelectronics in the title or abstract) is undoubtedly much larger; however, this analysis provides a sample that is believed to be representative of the related activities in the field.
Bioelectronics: A Taxonomy
The first reference to bioelectronics, published in 1912, focused on measurement of electrical signals generated by the body, which is the basis of the electrocardiogram. In the 1960s two new trends in bioelectronics began to appear. One trend, enabled by the invention of the transistor, centered on the development of implantable electronic devices and systems to stimulate organs, e.g., the pacemaker. In the same time frame, fundamental studies were beginning to be reported on electron transfer in electrochemical reactions. Today, these three areas of endeavor are converging to enable multi-signal recording and stimulation at the cell level, i.e., there is a kind of physical scaling law that is moving over time from the organ level toward cellular dimensions. At the same time, studies at the molecular level are leading to new understanding of cell performance. The analogy with nanoelectronics is striking; top-down scaling is being abetted by device design from the atomic level.