By Brian O'Loughlin, SkyWater Solutions Engineer

This is the first blog post in a three-part series exploring how SkyWater is enabling the future of biomedical innovation. In this first article, SkyWater Solutions Engineer, Brian O'Loughlin, discusses how semiconductors are accelerating change across healthcare and life sciences, from diagnostics to drug delivery.

Engineering Better Health: A SkyWater Blog Series - Part 1

The biomedical field is evolving rapidly, with advanced technologies unlocking breakthroughs in healthcare, diagnostics and therapeutics. At the heart of this transformation is the integration of semiconductors and microelectronics into biomedical applications, enabling miniaturization, precision and scalability.

SkyWater Technology, with its unique capabilities and customer-centric approach, is playing a pivotal role in driving these innovations forward. By combining specialized foundry services with our experience in biomedical applications, SkyWater enables innovators to move from concept to volume production with speed, flexibility and confidence.

How Microelectronics Are Transforming Healthcare

Semiconductors are increasingly central to the next generation of healthcare solutions. From wearable sensors to lab-on-a-chip devices, microelectronics are critical to enabling healthcare solutions that are smaller, faster and more accurate.

Here are just a few ways they're transforming patient care and biomedical research:

• Therapeutics: Miniaturized drug delivery systems and neurostimulation implants are transforming patient care.
• Wearable and Implantable Devices: Power-efficient biosensors are enabling continuous health monitoring and real-time data.
• Point-of-Care Diagnostics: Portable diagnostic devices enable rapid, on-site testing.
• Genomics and Proteomics: Semiconductor-enabled platforms are accelerating the analysis of genetic and protein data, driving personalized medicine and new therapeutic discoveries.

These applications highlight the incredible potential of semiconductors in medicine. But to bring these technologies to life, developers need more than just an idea, they need the right architecture, materials, and engineering approach.

Electrical and Optical Design Approaches

Point-of-care diagnostics and "omics" applications - like genomics and proteomics - are seeing rapid innovation through semiconductor-based consumables. These biochips generally fall into two categories: electrical-based and optical-based designs, each with distinct capabilities and challenges.

• Electrical-based consumables use chips to control fluids, generate excitation currents/voltages, and perform sensing functions at the micro or even nano scale. CMOS technology plays a key role in these systems, helping to collect and transmit data for further processing.
• Optical-based consumables rely on semiconductor materials to form tiny channels and structures that guide fluids and enable visual readouts-such as detecting fluorescence in a sample.

Unlike standard semiconductor components used for power or wireless functions, biochips are highly specialized. They're designed for a specific task, like identifying a protein or detecting a biomarker, and their performance depends on both the chip and the biological materials applied to it. That means innovation must happen in both hardware and biology, often at the same time. The development process is rarely linear, requiring experimentation, customization, and iteration to get it right. These aren't off-the-shelf parts, they're custom-engineered solutions. Because these chips are so specialized, successful development demands close collaboration, advanced fabrication capabilities, and a partner who can iterate alongside innovators from concept to production.

Coming Up in Part 2

Semiconductors are redefining what's possible in biomedical engineering, but innovation doesn't happen in a vacuum. In the next part of this series, we'll explore the unique challenges that biomedical innovators face-and how SkyWater's approach helps them overcome the obstacles on the path from concept to commercialization.

Are you working on a biomedical project and want to talk, contact us!