Xie Yingwei, Product Development Technology Manager, 3M China Ltd.: Challenges and Responses in the Design of Smart Wearable Medical Products

On August 31, 2018, the AI+ Medical Sub-Forum, one of the important forums of “2018 (Shanghai) China Artificial Intelligence Exhibition and OFweek (Second) Artificial Intelligence Industry Conference”, was successfully held in Shanghai. This special forum was held around the application of AI+ medical technology, and discussed the difficulties and challenges encountered in the commercialization of AI medical technology.

At this AI medical forum, the organizers invited a number of heavyweight guests and business leaders to give a wonderful speech, which attracted many medical people to come and listen. The venue was full of friends, showing the high attention of the AI+ medical sub-forum. And charm.

At the meeting, Xie Yingwei, Product Development Technology Manager of 3M China Ltd., discussed the challenges and solutions in the design of smart wearable medical products to thousands of audiences and media.

In addition, Xie Yingxi also said that the entire market can now be divided into two major blocks: one is the professional field, and the other is the consumer goods field. In the professional field, there are mainly continuous blood glucose monitoring and ECG monitoring; in the field of consumer goods, it is mainly for healthy people, elderly people and children who need to monitor the signs frequently.

The mobile healthcare market is a growing emerging market that can improve the daily lives of each of us. Today, in many mobile medical products , the design and technology of the product itself is sufficient to support its long-term continuous work. However, there are still many difficulties and challenges in the design of smart wearable medical products. In this regard, 3M China Co., Ltd. proposed a solution from the material technology level: the introduction of medical tape that can be in contact with the skin.

Xie Yingwei, the product development technology manager, said that 3M's vision is "to use technology to promote the industry, to promote the products with products, to innovate and benefit individuals." For skin sticking problems caused by prolonged skin contact, 3M uses raw material technology to easily pass through, and truly makes friends with the skin.

The following is the live speech of technical manager Xie Yingxi. The OFweek Medical Technology Network only organizes and edits without changing the original intention:

Thank you, today I am honored to be here to share with you. Maybe this topic is not with AI because our company is a material company. However, in the relevant AI design process, or in the design of wearable medical devices , we will definitely encounter products that are combined with the skin, so that everyone may use our products, so today I am on this topic with Everyone will discuss.

3M company introduction

3M is a 100-year-old innovative company. Over the past 100 years, we have covered various fields. Last year, the company's global sales were almost 31.7 billion US dollars.

We have five major industries, the first one is industrial supplies. Some well-known automotive after-sales categories, such as products such as thermal insulation film, as well as some tapes including the original car factory, as well as water purification systems, or some products of aerospace.

The second is electronic and energy products, mainly related to electronic tapes and fluorinated liquids such as high-voltage cables, mobile phones, and computers.

The third piece is a consumer product, such as a mop rag.

The fourth block is the safety and logo, the most famous of which is the number of masks, such as the N95 mask.

The business unit I am in is the Medical Products Division, and most of my work is in hospitals. Some biological indicators related to the field of infection control, marking tapes to hospitals, and dental filling materials, including complete machine materials, belong to the medical field.

Medical wearable market situation

It is estimated that by 2018, our entire global medical market may reach 427 billion US dollars, and divided into two major trends: First, we found many technology companies, not just traditional medical device companies, many technology companies are slowly entering To this market, including many of our customers, such as Lenovo, etc.; the second is that there are many integrations, shuffling in this piece, in the Asia-Pacific market we are the forefront, and the development is very rapid.

What aspects are we involved in the field of smart wearable medical devices?

Why do you have so many wearable devices first? First, because of the aging population, many elderly people need to stay at home, so many products are related to health monitoring, and the advancement of medical technology and the rapid development of big data have spawned the development of wearable devices. So now there are more and more wearable devices, which are mainly wearable devices that are precise, portable and comfortable.

Now the whole market can be divided into two major blocks: one is the professional field and the other is the consumer goods field. In the professional field, there are mainly continuous blood glucose monitoring and ECG monitoring; in the field of consumer goods, it is mainly for healthy people, elderly people and children who need to monitor the signs frequently. So the wearable device is booming in the past two years.

Here are the top ten best-developed wearable devices in the past two years. These wearable devices are mainly divided into several pieces, one for blood glucose monitoring and one for ECG monitoring. Most of our clients are still doing ECG monitoring and blood glucose monitoring, relieving chronic pain, and monitoring blood oxygen. Of course, a small part of the demand comes from baby temperature monitoring.

Why are we exposed to these customers throughout the process? Because almost six products are directly applied to the skin, and some friends may have an understanding of 24-hour ECG monitoring. If you go to the hospital for monitoring, you will usually be given a device tied to your body, and then you need to hang a lot of leads. In fact, these lines will affect your usual exercise, so it is not convenient. Devices that are attached to the body may have unstable signals, so many new wearable devices are beginning to consider sticking the device directly to the skin instead of relying on other auxiliary devices.

What are the main advantages of skin-adhesive devices?

First, it is lighter and thinner, the bonding is more uniform, the whole is more complete, there will be no punching phenomenon, and the instrument is relatively stable and the design is more flexible. In the process of manufacturing, it may be easier to automate the operation, and finally it is more cost-effective.

Everyone may think this is easy, isn't it just sticking something on the skin? There are a lot of tapes on the market outside, and it is possible to achieve this goal by taking one. But in fact we found that the skin is a very special substrate, it is different from the surface of the desktop wood or stainless steel, because it is an organ itself, is the largest surface organ, so it is active.

What are the challenges of skin sticking?

The factors affecting skin adhesion mainly include six aspects. The first piece, the skin it will breathe, it is a very sensitive surface, we found that many users may have some skin problems during use, in fact, many times it is caused by glue; another piece, skin It has a periodic replacement, the dermis is replaced in 14 days, the epidermis is 50 days, and some young people may be replaced in 28 days. In addition, the skin is elastic, so it may not be too flat when pasted; then the surface of the other piece of skin is not as easy to stick as other materials; the fifth piece is the texture is different, may be different from the entire skin of people of different races The situation will not be the same, and the texture will be different depending on the part to be pasted; the sixth piece is that it may have surface dirt, may sweat, and have salt. These are all because the skin is a living body and has some of its own metabolism.

How do we face the challenges of the skin, and where is its challenge?

The skin protects us from microbes and the outside world, like a conscientious guardian, but when designing medical devices, the skin becomes a stubborn enemy. In the next video series, you'll learn about the unique challenges that skin brings, and we'll help you pick the right adhesive material so that the skin doesn't become a drag on the device. Before we consider how to attach a medical device to the skin, we first need to understand what the skin is. Why do we face such a big challenge when we paste the skin? The skin looks just the thinnest layer of the human body, and he is so The unique reason is also to start with its internal structure!

The skin has a tiny layered structure. From the outside to the inside, the skin has a skin layer, a mastoid dermis layer, a reticular dermis layer and a subcutaneous tissue. The outer layer of the epidermis is composed of dead skin cells, about every 14 days. Once regenerated, the skin's metabolism makes it difficult to synthesize a suitable skin adhesive. Not only that, but also other biological factors make it difficult for skin adhesives to stick to the skin. When designing skin adhesives, the wearer's age is definitely a key factor. As you get older, your skin becomes more and more fragile, getting dry and getting more and more broken, because it grows with age. The epidermis will be flattened and thinned, making the epidermal cells more easily peeled off and damaged, and the body will lose hyaluronic acid, which makes the skin dry like a sponge, so the skin becomes more and more fragile, and the baby's skin is It is another kind of vulnerability, especially in newborns. The neonatal epidermis is not fully developed, so the skin layer is much thinner than normal skin. For those with sensitive or fragile skin, designers should consider milder adhesives.

As an organ that has a life to breathe, the skin should not be blocked or blocked for a long time, and the skin needs to be escaping moisture. The stratum corneum also has about 15% water, but if it penetrates into the epidermis and dermis, the water content is about 70%, and the water will continuously spread through the skin to the outer layer, blocking the skin's adhesive material and locking the water. But this can lead to a medical problem - the problem of impregnation. For the skin, breathable adhesives or adhesives are good for the skin, and locking the moisture is not good for the skin.

Everyone knows that there are hair follicles on the skin. Even if the hair is shaved before wearing the medical equipment, the hair under the equipment will continue to grow and will stick the adhesive up. Hair follicles also contain microbes, which can cause folliculitis, which is often accompanied by other infections. In addition to the skin challenge, device designers must also consider the level of activity of the user. Do they like sports, or do they like sedentary, which part of the body should the device stick to? How long does it take? What materials does it need to be compatible with? What is the manufacturing process like? Need sterilized? There are many issues that equipment engineers need to consider.

Therefore, skin sticking actually faces six major challenges. The most important one is the customer. It is difficult to translate the customer's needs into the design requirements of our products. Why? Because the customer is usually in the process of using it, he does not know which indicator of your ventilation index is associated with it. He only knows that the comfort is not comfortable, only know if my skin is allergic, and these must pass through us. To turn it into the required indicator.

The second piece is how to choose the tape. Some tapes may stick very tightly, tearing them off, and causing a lot of skin damage during the tearing process. The other piece may not be sticky at all. These are also considered.

The third piece is the effect of sterilization on the adhesive. Because many medical devices are sterilized, how long do you sterilize them with gamma or ethylene oxide? What is the humidity? These will affect the final performance of the adhesive, and will also affect the customer's experience and experience.

The fourth is to determine who the target customer is, whether it is the elderly or the patient, the child or the adult, how long does it take to apply, is it continuous for 14 days, or is it administered continuously for 28 days? These are all different.

The fifth piece is the importance of the backing, because there are different needs for sticking in different places, and it is necessary to have some elastic materials in some places where the bones are convex.

The sixth piece is to comprehensively assess the risk of the skin. If it is a cancer patient, it is very important to choose which adhesive to use when attaching.

Here are the major contradictions we have summarized. Is it a long time or a short time? Continuous attachment or intermittent attachment? Older, child or adult? Is it a female user or a male user? According to the above contradictions, we suggest that when choosing materials, we must use medical tape, and do not use industrial tape to fix medical devices.

Why use medical tape? Because the medical tape is divided into several properties, it needs to have the basic properties, that is, to promote the effect of skin adhesion, the time of contact, whether the gas permeability is easy to remove, and whether it is low residual glue.

The second piece of all medical tapes will undergo toxicological evaluation, cytotoxic and non-irritating tests, and then we have clinical technical support and clinical data support.

The third piece is functional. All tapes must be breathable, elastic and suitable for different backing materials, and include double-sided tape or single-sided tape, where it is fixed.

All medical tapes are based on iso13485 and all have medical device certificates to ensure the safety of the design. The protection that medical tape can provide is usually divided into three parts, one is traceability, then the quality system, and the other is a clinical support team.

Finally, I will introduce the mobile medical market in a little bit. In this case, we also have some experience.

One is more and more medical devices, and it is hoped that it will stick to the skin for a long time. Because we are not a single point test now, it is usually a continuous test, which is a big direction for future development.

The second is to have perfect skin adhesion, one is that it can stick, and the other is to not damage the skin when it is removed.

The third is to pay attention to the actual situation of the use of medical devices, because the customer's appeal is usually the comfort of its paste, so we have to design according to its actual use.

The fourth one is also said just now, to have a good fixed performance, but also to avoid skin problems. Here are some of our solutions, so if you are interested, you can look at it, we divide the tape into three parts.

The first is a medical tape that has been stuck for a long time. This tape can be applied for more than 14 days.

The second is an organic silicone tape. This piece is not used in hospitals because silicone is mainly used for children and some elderly people with fragile skin. The silicone band does not cause skin damage and is very gentle when torn.

The third is medical breathable tape. Ordinary medical breathable tape has a lot of choices, there are foam type, there are ordinary PU materials, there are other materials.

If you are interested, you can come to us for more product information. You can also ask us on our official website. Then we actually have a special website that can be provided to everyone. You can ask for your requirements above, then According to your request, we will give you advice on the relevant tape and then give you a sample for trial. This is my full speech, thank you.

Dietary Supplements

Dietary supplements are prescribed for products intended to supplement the diet, which may contain one or more of the following dietary ingredients, a vitamin, a mineral, an herb (herbal) or other plant, an amino acid, a food component used to increase the total daily intake to supplement the diet, or a concentrate, metabolite, component, extract or combination of the above ingredients. It also includes approved new drugs, vitamins or biologics that have been marketed as dietary supplements or food products before they are approved, issued or licensed.

Small Molecule Peptides Powder:Bovine bone oligopeptide powder,Fish collagen peptide powder,Sunflower disk oligopeptide powder
Oat protein peptide powder,Corn oligopeptide powder,Soybean peptide powder,Whey protein peptide.
Amino acids include glycine, alanine, valine, leucine, isoleucine, methionine (methionine), proline, tryptophan, serine, tyrosine, cysteine, phenylalanine, asparagine, glutamine, threonine, aspartic acid, glutamic acid, lysine, arginine, histidine.

Dietary Supplements Ingredients,Dietary Ingredients,Dietary Supplement Ingredient,Nutrition Enhancers

Shaanxi Zhongyi Kangjian Biotechnology Co.,Ltd , https://www.zhongyibiology.com