PowerPaper puts a bandaid on medical batteries

Most of the excitement recently in the battery world has been over lithium-ion batteries – and not in a good way Li-ion batteries and cells have some nasty characteristics, such as the potential to catch fire when they're overcharged or improperly charged. In addition, li-ion batteries pose a disposal problem, since lithium in not environmentally friendly.

A British start-up Toumaz, wants to make patient monitoring as simple as sticking on a Band-Aid – in fact, they call their Sensium sensor/monitor system "Digital Plaster", plaster being the British term for a small, disposable, sticky bandaid. As we saw in an earlier post, the Sensium chip is part of a platform the senses its environment and transmits information through a wireless network, developed by Toumaz. One of the company's earliest customer's was a hearing aid company, and hearing aids typically use zinc-air batteries, which are cheap, easily disposable (a huge plus for the bandaid model) and have a high-energy density. Toumaz's intial modules used zinc-air. However, they came across a new zinc battery technology, sold as PowerPaper, ideal for the throw-away sensors.

A PowerPaper battery is literally printed on paper, and then enclosed in plastic, an ideal setup for medical applications which rely on the twin benefits of Sterile and Disposable: PowerPaper doesn't require the metal casing of lithium-ion batteries.

PowerPaper's energy density is about 35 mAH, which is enough to power a Digital Plaster, according to Dr. Alison Burdett, director of technology at Toumaz."With the PowerPaper battery, the Plaster is able to run for four or five days."

Sterile, cheap, disposable – a great combination for medical electronics.