Lab On a Chip Example

[Arthur Hanson]

Heart-on-a-chip beats a steady rhythm

This is an just one example of the largest market on the horizon for the semi industry. These will be used in many industries and are just in their infancy. TSM among others is determined to be a leader in LOCs. To give you an idea of medical spending, it's 7 trillion a year compared to the world wide spending on semis of 300 billion a year.

LOCs will be used to develop and test processes at very low costs compared to what is done currently, do testing of all types, allow on the fly changes to experiments and tests, be used in everything from metallurgy to bio testing, although the LOCs will be vastly different. As an example when used in metallurgy a heat source will achieve high temperatures but only heat a few molecules that will require a totally different design to take the heat. This is just one example to show how broad the LOC field will be.

LOCs will change the whole field of technology by allowing the cost of experimentation to drop by factors of thousands in some cases, just as the processor has done to computational costs. This is part of the changes Big Data/Communications/Processing Power/Mems/LOC chain that will literally upend how we approach much of technology and pace at which it advances. Exciting times and opportunities are ahead.

Comments and Additions welcome and appreciated for I feel this is what SemiWiki is really about, helping bring about the broadest mindset possible to grow our collective potential.

 

[Li Yisuo]

Hi,
Bio industry evolves extremely slowly. Physical therapy development might be more profitable for you in short term. You can invent a cap with MEMS to grow hair. Or put a chip on facial mask to sustain moisture. That is much easier than persuading people to make medicines faster for poor patients. The Bio R&D expenditure is mostly limited by the micro economy rules of thumb. What a pity.

 

[Daniel Payne]

Fascinating article about the Heart on a Chip concept from UC Berkeley. There appears to be a friendly rivalry between UC Berkeley and Harvard in getting the most Lab on a Chip prototypes.

 

[Arthur Hanson]

Hi,
Bio industry evolves extremely slowly. Physical therapy development might be more profitable for you in short term. You can invent a cap with MEMS to grow hair. Or put a chip on facial mask to sustain moisture. That is much easier than persuading people to make medicines faster for poor patients. The Bio R&D expenditure is mostly limited by the micro economy rules of thumb. What a pity.

Li, the bio industry is now moving as fast as the semi industry and if you figure it's a much broader field, it's moving much, much faster. This is my largest area of investment and I study it very, very carefully and have been for about four years. All I do is research on companies and the science behind them. If I posted on medical, I would be doing at least five posts a day across a wide array of medical technology developments. I definitely feel medical will be the largest single market for semis in the future. The word now is the first person to live forever is alive now and we will see the age go up to 100 for the young people that take care of themselves now. Craig Venter created a designer life form a few years ago by doing an over lay with dominant genes. I'm surprised it didn't get wider play in the news.