Researchers and physicians at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, will collaborate with the nanoelectronics R&D center Imec, Leuven, Belgium, to advance silicon applications in healthcare, beginning with development of a device to enable a broad range of clinical tests. The corresponding tests will be performed outside the laboratory. The collaboration will combine the Johns Hopkins clinical and research expertise with Imec’s nanoelectronics capabilities. The two organizations plan to forge strategic ties with additional collaborators in the healthcare and technology sectors.
Imec and Hopkins hope to develop the next generation of “lab on a chip” concepts based on Imec technology. The idea is that such a disposable chip could be loaded with a sample of blood, saliva, or urine and then quickly analyzed using a smartphone, tablet, or computer, making diagnostic testing faster and easier for applications such as disease monitoring and management, disease surveillance, rural health care, and clinical trials.
This relationship is an important step toward creating a powerful cross-disciplinary ecosystem with consumer electronics and mobile companies, medical device manufacturers, research centers, and the broader bio-pharma and semiconductor industries, they said.
Imec, established as an independent non-profit research organization in 1984, is a leader in the fields of silicon nanotechnology, semiconductors and bioelectronics.
