SMT007 Magazine

SMT007-Nov2018

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8 SMT007 MAGAZINE I NOVEMBER 2018 I grew up in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In my hometown, electronic media consisted of five television stations—one for each of the big three networks, an independent station, and a public broadcasting channel. Radios were all mono AM band. At one radio station in my hometown during this time, a twenty- something audio technician got permission to set up an "underground" FM radio station in a broom closet of the broadcast building. That little experiment grew into one of the most listened-to FM stations in my hometown today. Further, wireless, back then, meant you had a CB radio in your car. If you tuned in to channel 18 at 9 p.m. every weeknight, you could hear my buddies and me comparing answers on our home- work assignments. I think we invented the chat room! Looking back, that period of time was the dawning of a golden age of innovation in communications tech- nology. That era led to wireless phones, electronic data terminals and pay stations, and technology that allows us to watch our favorite shows on our own time and not the TV stations' schedule. If you had told 10-year-old Nolan that two or three decades later these things would come to pass, that version of me would have had trouble taking you seriously (my 10-year-old self was much more of a skeptic than grown-up me). We live in a very different—but mostly better—world because of this innovative era. I say that out loud to my son every time he video calls me from his home at a Naval station in Virginia. Just as the telecommunications golden age launched 30 years ago, it seems that medical device technology is gearing up to do something similar. The Internet of Things (IoT), Inter - net of the Body (IoB), and printed electron- ics technologies are emerging, and they're converging with medi- cal devices in a big way. It's hard not to conclude that we're seeing the beginning of an innovative golden age in medical devices due to the confluence of these three disrup- tive new technologies. The way we use elec- tronics to monitor our health and well-being will in all likelihood be unrecognizable by the middle of the 21 st century—"Grandpa, tell me again why the nurses stuck the thermometer Nolan's Notes by Nolan Johnson, I-CONNECT007 Is This a Golden Age for Medical Devices?

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