Improvements in Glass Encapsulation Technology Offer Significant Advantages for Implantable Medical Devices

The most recent advances in glass encapsulation of microelectronic devices offer important benefits to the developers of 'smart' implantable medical devices.

These benefits include reduced risk of damage to encapsulated circuitry, high-biocompatibility, superior hermeticity, and good mechanical stability.

Smart implants (sometimes called active implants) are designed to provide in-vivo diagnostic biofeedback on a patient's condition (blood glucose, intra-ocular pressure, etc) and/or to provide treatment (such as neurostimulators for the treatment of epilepsy, implantable drug pumps, cochlear implants, and a growing range of others).

Often, a smart implant is part of a microsystem designed to measure and transmit diagnostic data, which must function autonomously over its intended lifespan, which might be a single day or several decades long.