Preventive Healthcare is the Key to Driving Down Costs

Global healthcare costs are on the rise, they are estimated to be at approximately 9 Trillion US dollars, which is close to 10% of the world’s GDP, and the costs are growing at 2 to 3x the inflation rate. Healthcare providers are seeking ways to slow this trend and reduce costs and they are looking to technology partners like Maxim to help them with this challenge.

With today’s’ continuous monitoring technology, we are seeing in a shift in the consumer mindset, they are moving from being reactive to being more proactive. What this means is consumers want real-time information about trends in their health and wellbeing rather than monitoring their health once a year, which is critical for people’s long-term health and wellbeing as many chronic diseases can potentially lead to other health problems.

Preventive healthcare is the key to driving down costs and we believe it is a question of when and not if these solutions will become widespread, offering a large growth opportunity for solution providers like Maxim.

An industry research predicts that remote monitoring of patients will dramatically increase through recently 5 years with the use of connected healthcare devices, this shift in consumer mindset is driving the demand for Small, low power, clinical grade wearable devices to enable these services. Healthcare providers and technology providers must embrace and accommodate the new demands to be successful.

Consumers need better self-monitoring devices that offer convenient form factors as well as longer battery life and clinical grade accuracy. Clinical performance is increasingly important even in consumer applications because individuals need to be able to rely on the data. You may have seen some negative reports on wearables about their HR accuracy claims.

As a provider of both off-the-shelf and application-specific analog and power ICs for medical and wellness applications, Maxim provides wearable essentials that offer longer battery life, smallest form factors while still providing clinical level accuracy. Our innovative solutions have been extending the capabilities of healthcare products and enabling a heathier world for over 30 years.

Within the healthcare business unit, we are currently focusing our efforts on 4 different technology areas:

• Bio Potential Sensors for ECG and Bio impedance based use cases
• Optical Sensors for PPG based use cases
• Temperature Sensors for measuring human body temperature
• PMICs for smart power management

On Sep. 25, Maxim unveiled Health Sensor Platform 2.0 (HSP 2.0), which is the first wrist-worn platform for monitoring ECG, heart rate and temperature. This next-generation rapid prototyping, evaluation and development platform, also known as MAXREFDES101#, brings the ability to monitor electrocardiogram (ECG), heart rate and body temperature to a wrist-worn wearable, saving up to six months in development time.

It has been challenging to derive precise ECG monitoring from the wrist (most alternatives require a wearable chest strap). In addition, getting accurate body temperature typically requires using a thermometer at another location. Through its proprietary sensor and health monitoring technology, Maxim has overcome these challenges in the HSP 2.0.

Enclosed in a watch casing, the wrist-based form factor enables HSP 2.0 to provide basic functionality out of the box, with body-monitoring measurements starting immediately. Data can be stored on the platform for patient evaluation or streamed to a PC for analysis later. Unlike other wearables, the data measurements collected by the HSP 2.0 can be owned by the wearer, alleviating data privacy concerns and allowing users to conduct their own data analysis.

As many designers struggle to develop good optical heart-rate solutions for health and fitness wearables, Maxim also launched its newest wearable platforms for health and fitness applications late in June this year, which solve these challenges.

Designers can extract vital signs and raw data for their wearable designs with the MAX-HEALTH-BAND, as well as monitor clinical-grade electrocardiograph (ECG) and heart rate with the MAX-ECG-MONITOR. The MAX-HEALTH-BAND evaluation and development platform, a wrist-worn heart-rate and activity monitor, features the MAX86140 optimized optical pulse-oximeter/heart-rate sensor, the MAX20303 wearable power-management solution, and Maxim’s motion-compensated algorithms. The MAX-ECG-MONITOR evaluation and development platform features the MAX30003 ultra-low-power, clinical-grade analog front end (AFE), which monitors ECG and heart-rate signals.

With these end applications, software companies and startups can significantly accelerate time to market by using them right out of the box. They are complete solutions allowing customers to design a heart-rate and activity monitor in its entirety—using either their own algorithms or the one we created for them.