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This Defense Intelligence Reference Document, dated 31 March 2010 and numbered DIA-08-1003-020, was prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency's Defense Warning Office under its Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program. It surveys biosensors and biomedical microelectromechanical systems, covering brain-implanted micromachine neuroelectrodes, drug-delivery pumps, glucose sensors, neural interfaces, retinal prostheses, microfluidic lab chips, NASA cell-culture systems and microcantilever sensors. It concludes that the field is expanding rapidly, with nanomechanical systems expected to follow.
From the source: Release of 2026-09-18 Incident: 3/31/10, Las Vegas, Nevada. Released with redactions. This document is a Defense Intelligence Reference Document (DIRD), a technical reference format used by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) to capture baseline knowledge on a specific topic for later analytic use. DIRDs are best understood as reference and synthesis products rather than as original research. It is one of 38 DIRDs produced under the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP) between 2009 and 2011. Because AAWSAP’s scope permitted a broad range of supporting topics, not every DIRD in the series directly concerns aerospace systems or future threat assessment. The following summary reflects the DIRD’s scope and framing at the time of writing and should not be read as implying current validation of the concepts discussed. This DIRD surveys biosensors and BioMEMS, a broad class of miniature biomedical devices that combine microscale engineering with sensing, fluid handling, stimulation, or drug-delivery functions. The report reviews major application areas including implantable blood-chemistry sensors, neural interfaces, neurostimulation, drug-delivery pumps, microfluidic systems, and emerging nanoscale extensions of the field, while emphasizing that miniaturization can improve sensitivity and enable functions that are difficult or impossible at larger scales. However, it also makes clear that practical development is constrained by biocompatibility, long-term stability, sensor drift, device degradation inside the body, and the high regulatory burden associated with implantable medical systems. The document presents BioMEMS as a rapidly growing and productive field whose future advances are likely to come through continued improvements in fabrication, materials, and reliability.
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Methods of creating a more sustained blood concentration of a given drug are desirable
to increase drug effectiveness. Similarly there are other medical applications for
controlled-release drug-delivery systems, such as that for insulin, where it is desirable
to maintain a more sustained dose over a period of hours.
There has been the application of MEMS technologies in the creation of better ways to
deliver drugs to the human body by way of small implantable reservoirs that can slowly
release their drug over a prolonged period of time. Figure 6 shows a MEMS-based
insulin-delivery pump for the treatment of diabetes. This is perhaps one of the largest
applications of BioMEMS in medicine.
Subcutaneous drug delivery
Debiotech p iezoelec ric
in sulin pump
S itzerland
http://lllww.tfebiotech. com/dobiotoch.h
• MEMS technology using Si and glass
biocompatibility
• Precise control of nl volumes
• Prevent under/overdosing and detect occlusions, other problems
• Small size : 114th the size of existing monitors
• Proprietary hermetic packaging
• In he U.S. alone, 60 mill ion people are affec e by diabe es
• 15% of worldwide heal h spending goes award rea ing diabe es .
• 450,000 people now wear ransportable insulin pumps worldwide.
sources: Debiotech ebsite· Ad vanced Packaging
Figure 6. An Insulin MEMS Pump. An implantable drug-delivery device.
Diabetes is a disorder in wh ich glucose (blood sugar) is not properly taken into the cells
of the body. This process is normally mediated by the hormone insulin, which is
produced by the islet cells of the pancreas. Insulin circu lates in the blood to actuate a
receptor on tissue cells that causes them to uptake glucose from the blood stream. If
there is too little insulin (as in Type 1 diabetes) the cells will not uptake glucose from
the blood, the cell s will starve, and blood sugar levels become too high from
unabsorbed glucose. Alternatively, cell s may not respond properly to normal insulin
levels (as in Type 2 diabetes) and require artificially higher levels of insulin to uptake
glucose. This is ca lled insulin resista nce. In either case, blood insulin levels can be
increased by using insulin injection devices.
Brittle diabetes is a condition where blood glucose levels fluctuate wildly with eating or
fasting causing hyperglycemia (too high a blood glucose-more than about 100 mg
percent) or too low (hypoglycemia-less than about 60 mg percent). Brittle diabetics
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Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 45 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.