As sophisticated health care technology increasingly migrates towards point of care and into the home, medical system requirements are becoming much more challenging in terms of size, cost, robustness, performance and ease of use. The demands presented by this trend offers great opportunities for analog semiconductor manufacturers to develop application specific standard products and high performance standard products that are targeted at providing enabling technology for these system level breakthroughs. The development of such new analog IC products are more than ever dependent on effective sharing of knowledge between the system designer and the analog IC designer, since the focus of the IC's innovation needs to be precisely aimed where it can have the greatest impact on the system.
This paper will provide an overview ofnumerous examples of such knowledge sharing which have produced high value-added, breakthrough ASSP's and high performance analog standard products in the healthcare market and will suggest that the ability of semiconductor manufacturers to develop such a deep systems understanding and provide maximum value to their customers is becoming one of the most important competitive dimensions in the analog semiconductor space.
Pat O'Doherty is Healthcare Segment Director at Analog Devices, a world-leading supplier of analog, mixed-signal, and digital signal processing integrated circuits. In this role, Pat leads ADI's business development and marketing efforts for technology that enables prevention, detection, diagnosis, and treatment of a variety of human conditions. Healthcare is one of the most rapidly growing segments of the global economy and is an area where ADI's technology is uniquely positioned to make a difference. Pat oversees the design, sales, and marketing teams responsible for developing signal chain solutions for the medical imaging and patient monitoring markets and identifying new medical market opportunities for ADI.