For relatively short period, the average life of human has been really increased. We can attributed this lengthened life to many factors like Medical, scientific knowledge, medications, general improvement of sanitation etc.
Additionally, the mechanical energy harvester made by University of Arizona and University of Illinois, seems to contribute to this trend by allowing a medical device put on internal organs to generate energy by itself.
Thin and flexible energy harvester is really innovative considering many restrictions of formal rigid energy harvester. Rigid, non-flexible harvester cannot be put into internal organs which move flexibly.
This energy harvester is composed of two thin layers and piezoelectric elements between them. Piezoelectric elements harvest energy from small conformation change of internal organs when they are moving.
According to the researchers, their ultimate goal is to free medical devices from batteries. As long as the devices are depending on the batteries for getting energy, there will be repeated surgeries for changing a battery with chances getting complication.
I think it will need more time to realize this goal. For example, there need to be more experiment to ensure safety and efficiency in human body. Current experiment is most done with animals.
However, when it is done, this will further length the human life in the future. As the researchers said, in the future, human can live with a whole artificial heart. Considering the development of devices and their impact on human life, it's really important to make the devices work properly without external supply of energy.
When we get to the university of Illinois, I'd like to listen to Prof. Rogers about this experiment and talk about the future of these devices ; when we can use this kind of pacemakers, what effort we should put to make this amazing pacemaker into reality.
Read more at : http://uanews.org/story/tomorrow-s-pacemakers-batteries-not-included
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