Despite talk about the U.S. recession and the impact of the U.S. housing crisis on the IC business, new bright spots are creating a new dimension. And we are hearing more about them these days.

While there is no killer app on the horizon, medical electronics is making headlines as the next growth opportunity. They say that baby boomers in the U.S. are getting old and will revive health care the way they have resuscitated other industries since the 1950s.

As a result, many chipmakers are pushing medical electronics into their agenda. In 2004, Intel Corp. formed the Digital Health Group. Last year, news broke out that Texas Instruments and Microchip had created medical groups. ADI, Maxim and Qualcomm are also reported to have joined the fray.

According to Databeans Inc., the 2007 medical electronics market was dominated by the usual large chipmakers--Toshiba, ST and TI. However, many other suppliers are gaining share, and as with any emerging and enabling industry, there is plenty of room for more.

Digital hospitals
Thanks to advances in networking, image processing and sensor technologies, more and more hospitals are going digital. And the much talked about concept of telemedicine—a convergence of medicine, telecommunications and electronics technologies—is now becoming a reality.

Then there are lab-on-chip solutions gradually gaining ground. Researchers in Singapore have recently demonstrated a lab-on-chip that can detect avian flu in less than 30mins. But a far higher growth impact could come from health care products that people could use as home monitors and treatment devices, and link remotely to health care service providers. Such devices include heart meters, pedometers, home defibrillators, and insulin testers and pumps.

TI sees DSPs fueling the market for digital hearing aids. In this application, low-power DSPs are finding new opportunities in enhancing designs, which at the moment, are too large, expensive and lacking customization.

The chipmaker also sees its communications and analog ICs as part of the designs of a broad range of portable, networked devices. Rich Templeton, TI president and CEO, noted that 15 percent of the U.S. GDP in 2007 was spent on health care and five percent of it was spent in China.

An increasing number of Asia product manufacturers have entered the medical electronics segment to win their share of pie in the health care boom. We hope that medical electronics will do its share of bringing the semiconductor industry back on a healthy track this year.

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