Design and Test Infrastructure For The Low Cost Manufacture of Print Electronics On Flexible Substrates

对低成本医疗保健的需求要求患者在传统医院和其他政府运营的机构之外，使用个性化的健康管理系统，在自己的医疗保健中发挥积极作用。这种管理系统将建立在低成本、超低功耗的消费设备上，如笔记本电脑、智能平板电脑和手机，以及低成本的可穿戴传感器技术。智能设备提供具有显著处理能力的便携式监测系统，其具有到万维网云服务的无线连接。由于过去十年中销售的智能设备数量超过全球人口的五分之二，因此为所有人提供低成本健康网络的瓶颈在于智能设备和个人之间。因此，我们的研究目的是专注于使用低成本电子和MEMS技术的个人和智能设备之间的“最后分米”。** 这一目标将使我们的注意力最初集中在开发可穿戴传感器平台上，该平台具有一次性前端，可以大批量低成本制造。一次性医疗材料在涉及体液或物质的许多医疗保健方案中起着很大的作用。虽然人们可能倾向于用一个或两个硅IC来构建整个系统，但在使用后丢弃IC的成本将不具有成本效益。相反，这项工作将考虑使用低成本半导体，导电和介电油墨的印刷电子（PE）的应用，这些油墨可以使用基于纸张或卷对卷的打印方法进行分配，类似于用于打印报纸和其他图形显示的方法。此外，该项目将考虑新的制造技术，如为测试而设计，为制造而设计等，将PE确立为一次性医疗保健用途的低成本、高通量制造方法。该项目将涉及至少9名研究生（6名博士和3名硕士）。工程学生）和五名本科生在这个项目的持续时间。研究生将通过课程，行业互动和论文研究指导接受培训。在短期内，该项目将集中精力解决尿失禁的一般问题，特别是夜间遗尿的问题，即夜间意外或不必要的尿液泄漏。失眠是一种普遍的健康状况，很少被讨论，因为患有这种疾病的人经常不好意思与他们的医疗保健提供者讨论。世界卫生组织称尿失禁为“最后的医学禁忌之一”。然而，一些估计表明，多达330万加拿大人经历某种形式的尿失禁。由于“婴儿潮”人口的老龄化，在未来几年内，经历尿失禁的人数将急剧上升。

The need for low-cost health care requires patients to play an active role in their own health care outside traditional hospitals and other government-run institutions using personalized health management systems. Such management systems will be built on low-cost, ultra-low-power consumer devices such as laptops, smart tablets and phones, together with low-cost wearable sensor technologies. The smart devices provide a portable monitoring system with significant processing capability with wireless connections to world-wide-web cloud services. As the number of smart devices sold in the past decade is in excess of 2/5th of the entire world's population, the bottleneck to a low-cost health network for all lies between the smart device and the individual person. It is therefore our intention with this research aim to focus on the “last decimeter” between the individual and the smart device using low-cost electronics and MEMS technologies. ******This aim will see our attention initially focused on the development of a wearable sensor platform with a disposable front-end that can be manufactured in high volume and low-cost. Disposable medical materials play a large part in many health care protocols involving body fluids or substances. While one may be tempted to construct the entire system with one or two silicon ICs, the cost of throwing away the ICs after use would not be cost-effective. Instead, this work will consider the application of printed electronics (PE) that uses low-cost semiconductor, conductive and dielectric inks that can be dispensed using sheet-based or roll-to-roll print methods, similar to those used to print newspapers and other graphic displays. Moreover, this project will consider new manufacturing techniques, such as design-for-test, design-for-manufacturing, etc., to establish PE as a low-cost, high-throughput manufacturing method for disposable health care use. This project will involve at least nine graduate students (6 Ph.D and 3 M. Eng. students) and five undergraduate students over the duration of this project. Graduate students will receive training through courses, industry interaction, and mentoring on thesis research.****** In the near term, this project will focus its efforts on the sensory solution to the general problem of urinary incontinence and, in particular, the problem of nocturnal enuresis, which is the accidental or unwanted leakage of urine at night. Incontinence is a prevalent health condition that is rarely discussed, as people living with the condition are often embarrassed to discuss it with their healthcare providers. The World Health Organization calls incontinence “one of the last medical taboos”. However, some estimates indicate that as many as 3.3 million Canadians experience some form of incontinence. The number of people experiencing incontinence will rise dramatically over the coming years due to the aging "boomer" population.