Traditional clinical medical equipment has long relied on complex electronics and software to function. As the population ages and the societal factors drive home healthcare, new consumer grade medical devices are appearing that can perform increasingly advanced monitoring and diagnostics ranging from blood glucose monitoring and blood pressure measurement to body fat measurement. Consequently, the medical devices sector has become a high-volume market for which technical innovation, cost control and IP management are competitive prerequisites.

While traditional healthcare giants like pharmaceutical companies are familiar with managing IP, as they diversify their business into the consumer medical devices sector they are faced with less familiar technologies such as semiconductor-based electronics, sensors and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). However, most medical device companies and their OEM suppliers don’t want to tie up valuable internal engineering resources in the analytical work required for technical intelligence and patent infringement investigations.

Component suppliers to the medical device market like semiconductor chip makers are interested in understanding circuit design trends and application requirements within the high potential medical devices market to help them make product development decision and ensure protection of their intellectual property.