The world's smallest differential pressure sensor – which Sensirion will present at COMPAMED 2016 – will be ideally suited for such mobile applications, particularly in the field of respiration. The digital component's size of only five times eight times five millimeters will allow it to be installed in devices which previously did not have the space for sensors to be fitted in them. The small sensor will also make it possible to significantly reduce the size of existing devices. Besides its minimum dimensions, the ‘SDP3x’ differential pressure sensor also convinces with outstanding precision and long-term stability as well as with the fact that it is also free from zero-point drift. That is why the sensor is ideally suited for measuring flow behaviors in bypass configurations. It is expected that the new sensor will be employed in medical devices used for home care, in portable medical devices and intelligent inhalers. The SDP3x works with the latest generation of CMOSens sensor chips and lies at the heart of Sensirion's new sensor platform for measuring differential pressure and mass air flow.

3D printing set to revolutionize medical technology
“Whether in research, industrial manufacturing or in hospitals: 3D printing is set to revolutionize medical technology,” says Kathrin Schäfer, Editor of DeviceMed Magazine, which has for years cooperated with Messe Düsseldorf to stage the COMPAMED SUPPLIERS FORUM. The ‘LightFlex’ research project, for instance, which is handled by the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology (IPT) in cooperation with a variety of industrial partners, is an example of how the process is changing the field. It is a project aimed at manufacturing medical prostheses using a combination of 3D printing and fiber-composite technologies. Fiber-reinforced injection-molded components are associated with one great disadvantage: It is very difficult to adapt them to individual wishes and requirements. It is usually only possible to produce them in large quantities because the corresponding tools are expensive and inflexible. Which is why injection-molded components are increasingly replaced by those produced with the help of additive manufacturing: 3D printing makes it possible to individualize and functionalize almost any component before it is combined with a thermoplastic fiber-composite plastic to help it achieve the required load-bearing capacities. Since 2004, the market for additive manufacturing has been growing by around 20% per year (source: Wohlers Report 2016) – this strong growth, also driven by medical-technology applications, is expected to continue in future years.

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