Big Future in a Small Space: Wireless SoCs Enable Wearable Medical and Wellness Devices to Realize Their Potential

The technology of personal medical monitoring is changing incredibly fast.

As little as ten years ago, the normal way that a patient would keep track of general health indicators, such as heart rate and blood pressure, or specific indicators such as blood glucose, was through an invasive medical procedure such as a blood test. Such testing would often need to take place away from the home, in a local clinic or a hospital.

Fast forward to today, and patients have it much better. Anyone – not just those receiving treatment from a medical practitioner – can benefit from monitoring vital signs, as well as other indicators of long-term health such as activity and sleep. That’s because a new generation of wearable medical and consumer devices have extraordinary sensor and data processing capabilities built into them.

The newest types of products, such as continuous glucose monitors (CGM) and smart rings, can report on the wearer’s condition 24/7, yet are so small and light that the user is hardly aware of them, and are so convenient and easy to use that they are valuable to anyone.

At the heart of this new type of wearable medical device is advanced wireless connectivity technology: a Bluetooth® Low Energy system-on-chip (SoC) for linking to a smartphone, tablet or personal computer, and NFC – the technology that enables contactless payment – for authentication, pairing, configuration, and charging.

Long Battery Life, Tiny Form Factor

The most important limits on the design of both a CGM and a smart ring are the same: space and power. Both devices perform monitoring 24/7, and the expectation is for long battery life, to limit the number of times that the user has to charge them. This puts a strong emphasis on the need for low power consumption in the wireless SoC, both in active and standby modes.