Bringing Power to Places That Couldn’t Get It Before

From X-rays to CAT scans, electricity enables modern medicine. But when operating in impoverished countries or disaster zones, doctors lose the life saving advantages provided by medical devices. Most hospitals and aid agencies rely on batteries and generators to power the machines, but Vladimir Leonov has created a new class of medical device that run on the only two renewable sources of power available everywhere: body heat and sunlight.

Leonov, a Senior Research Scientist at the Dutch research center Imec, has already created an electroencephalograph (EEG), which monitors brain waves, and an electrocardiograph (ECG), which measures the beating of a heart, powered entirely by the sun, and the patient’s own body. By constructing both machines from low energy-use parts, and by utilizing multiple forms of renewable energy, Leonov’s devices can provide doctors the benefits of modern medicine in even the most remote and dire conditions.

“You have a disaster,” said Leonov. “Airport closed, port closed. The devices that exist in modern medical clinic can be miniaturized and fit in a suitcase. The devices can be self powered, without the doctor needing batteries or to plug anything in.”

Advances in two key technologies enable Leonov’s devices: efficient thermopiles and miniature solar panels. Thermopiles are arrays of thermocouples, metallic combination that create electricity from differences in heat. According to Leonov, his thermopiles can generate 400 microvolts for every 34 degree Fahrenheit difference in temperature, and convert 10 milliwatt of power from every 1.5 square inch of skin. Thanks to small variations like wind and shadows, the thermopiles continue to generate electricity even when the ambient temperature and surface body temperature are the same.

For Leonov, using thermopiles allowed him to solve two key problems of his earlier designs. When working just with solar panels, he found that the devices didn’t get enough juice, since the patients attached to EEGs and ECGs had conditions that necessarily kept them inside and out of the sun. Similarly, piezoelectric generation, which converts body movement into electrical energy, also failed to generate enough power because most patients requiring EEG or ECG monitoring spent most of their time in bed, not moving around. But even a coma victim generates heat, and when paired with a small amount of light for solar power, that heat produced enough power to run the machines.

Initially, both the EEG and the ECG were bulky, uncomfortable headsets. However, Leonov did create one proof of concept shirt with an ECG embedded right into the clothing. Leonov sees that innocuous deployment of medical technology as the logical end point of this research. Rather than strapping a person up to a cumbersome machine, ECGs, EEGs, and other medical monitoring devices would simply be sewn into hospital gowns, and wirelessly transmit their information to receivers carried around by doctors.

Leonov still thinks the price needs to come down before these devices can achieve widespread use, but with the technical challenge of creating the machines out of the way, that’s currently the only barrier to production.

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