Medicine has joined with new technologies to offer us all kinds of gadgets with which to take care of our health. For example, among the most curious products presented at CES 2023, we were able to see a urine meter that is installed in the toilet bowl so you can have a real-time analysis.
And now it’s the turn of Silicon Labs, a company specializing in technology miniaturization and that has just presented its new xG27 chipset. We are talking about miniaturized processors that have a minimum weight. In addition, despite their millimeter size, they offer great energy efficiency to work without being connected to a battery and that has a lot of room in the medical sector.
A chip that will revolutionize the medical sector
The first example? It will be used to be mounted on a tooth and be able to control saliva through its different systems. As reported from Silicon LAbs, the xG27 processor family consists of the BG27 and MG27, two high-performance chips that work with an ARM Cortex M33 architecture. And beware, the BG27 has Bluetooth connectivity so that you can review all the data on your mobile phone.
And what about its dimensions? Well what with 2mm per side we have a product that is less wide than the tip of a ballpoint pen. It’s not the world’s smallest Bluetooth chip, but it’s among them.
At the level of medicine, this sensor is great, since the idea is to use it as a salivary diagnostic sensor since it is small enough to be placed on a molar to monitor the patient’s saliva and obtain data in real time.
Silicon Labs processor
Taking into account that you can detect up to 1000 different elements in saliva, it is clear that this chip has a long way to go. The biggest impediment is placed by the different health sectors, which continue to be very recent to the arrival of implanted chips.
But, although previously the FDA (American health regulatory agency) usually rejects this type of project, it seems that the tests with this processor indicate that it will be able to pass the FDA regulatory process. If all goes well, the product could be on the market in 12-18 months.
So, although its launch is not imminent, surely in a few years we will have all kinds of sensors so that our doctors can monitor our health in real time. And seeing how gadgets like the Apple Watch are saving lives through a simple ECG, the idea of having a product of these characteristics implanted does not look bad.