Chip makers get serious about medical technology

After years of just letting their chips be used by medical technology companies, racking up the sales as they would in the mobile phone business, chip-makers are finally starting to compete for medical application dollars.

Business Week reports that many chips designed for one application space have proven useful in unrelated medical spaces.

STMicro created a chip for probing nuclear structures which was applied to devices examining patients for skin cancer. An IBM chip used in a game console found its way into an imaging system used for breast cancer. We reported here on an HP chip being used in skin patches.

Databeans says the medical chip industry is growing 12% per year, and is now worth $2.6 billion, so it's finally mature enough and fast-growing enough to go after full-bore.

The growing unity between computing and medical equipment is also reflected in the recent appointment of Peter Löscher as the new head of Siemens, the 106-year old German technology firm.

Siemens Medical has an office in Alpharetta, GA, just a few miles from my Atlanta office, and has been a star performer for the company. (We profiled some of their innovative marketing here recently -- vote for Americus.) Löscher intends to instill management disciplines he learned at GE, another big conglomerate with a large medical unit, to cut jobs at Siemens.

The takeover of medical technology by chip technology could lead to faster product roll-outs and the financial benefits of Moore's Law. Hopefully these new thinkers will also bring with them other benefits of the computer space, like standards.