Following discussions with both the companies involved in the business of manufacturing implantable neuro-stimulators, pacemakers and the like, and the doctors dealing with the patients being treated with these devices, product design and development firm Cambridge Consultants decided to develop a solution.
A breakthrough in through-body wireless power transfer technology targeted at the manufacturers of today’s tiniest and most advanced implantable devices, the MagLense system enables flexible, efficient and safe wireless power transfer to devices inside the body without precise alignment with the implant, and regardless of the size and body shape of the patient, thanks to two new ‘novelties’.
The first is the company’s use of multiple uniquely shaped flexible coils, which can bend and flex without any impact on performance.
“There are patients with different body types and different implants go in different parts of the body – we needed to come up with a technology that was agnostic to all of that,” says Dr Arun Venkatasubr amanian, head of implanted connectivity at Cambridge Consultants, and one of the two-man team behind the invention of MagLense.
“If we had just come up with a technology that was flexible, there would be nothing new about that – it would be the same as existing phone charging pads. But with MagLense, when you bend it, it still maintains its performance. It’s not wasting energy in the form of heat on the skin.”
The second “clever bit of technology”, as Venkatasubramanian puts it, is the fact that MagLense is agnostic to the orientation of the implant. Newer pacemakers, which are implanted directly into the patient’s heart through minimally invasive surgery, are not only much smaller than their conventional counterparts, they can also move around within the body.
MagLense’s software is self-calibrating so that it can deliver the optimum power for different implant locations, orientations, sizes and shapes. In addition, it intelligently targets only the intended implant – avoiding any heat damage to surrounding tissue or other implants.