Feds Help Finance Creation of Implantable Body Antenna for ‘Long-term Patient Monitoring’
The project is being financed in collaboration with the National Research Foundation of Korea to create a high frequency antenna that can be permanently implanted under a person’s skin.
“Antennas operating near or inside the human body are important for a number of applications, including healthcare,” a grant for the project said. “Implantable medical devices such as cardiac pacemakers and retinal implants are a growing feature of modern healthcare, and implantable antennas for these devices are necessary to monitor battery level and device health, to upload and download data used in patient monitoring, and more.”
The grant said that an implantable device could be used for “long-term patient monitoring” and “biometric tracking,” or using technology to verify a person’s identity.
“Despite their potential use in long-term patient monitoring and wireless biometric tracking there is limited research on [Ultra High Frequency] UHF [radio-frequency identification] RFID for insertion in high-loss human body environments,” the grant said. “This research will greatly benefit from procedures already in place at Dr. You Chung Chung’s antenna lab at Daegu University in Daegu, Korea.”