Abstract

Many life-threatening diseases can be prevented or treated better if only the methods to diagnose or monitor or treat them would be more directly accessible and more affordable to the patient. The COVID-19 pandemic shows that rapid testing is of key importance for infectious diseases. But also other major diseases (cardiovascular, diabetes, cancer, neurodegenerative diseases…) can benefit immensely from cost-effective techniques that can be used in a point-of-care setting or even directly by the patient. Electronic ICs have played a key role in medical devices for many years. Photonic ICs are joining in and bring added value and functionality for a broad range of medical diagnosis and therapy. Silicon photonics stands out as a key enabler since it builds on the maturity of the silicon technology world while offering a rich variety of sensing modalities in an ultra-compact footprint. In this talk I will discuss several examples of proof-of-concept medical devices implemented by means of silicon or silicon nitride photonic ICs, both for in-vitro and in-vivo applications.