Medical Wearables & Electronic Devices

Medical Electrodes

Henkel has developed high-reliability electrically conductive material solutions tailored to the unique requirements of medical electrodes, including TAB ECG, TENS, Grounding, and Defibrillation Electrodes. From sensing materials to skin adhesives, Henkel’s medical solutions enable performance, reliability, and comfort. With Henkel’s latest material innovation, the “dry electrode adhesive,” long term wear, signal quality consistency, and decrease of material waste can be achieved. These advances are made possible with new developments in printed electronics technology that enable new medical electronic device capabilities.

Henkel’s medical electrode materials portfolio helps device manufacturers:

• Improve patient comfort
• Offer long- term wear and remote monitoring
• Increase reliability and signal quality
• Produce cost-effective electrodes

Smart Health Patch

Smart health patches for remote patient monitoring can continuously measure heart rate, respiration rate, ECG, and many other human body functions. These patches leverage on-skin sensor technology, miniaturized hardware, and data communication to improve patient treatment quality and comfort. The patch technology allows healthcare professionals to increase quality of care, due to the availability of long-term medical data, while decreasing the number of hospitalizations and costs.

The innovative dry electrode materials, conductive inks protective coatings, and skin-grade pressure sensitive adhesives from Henkel offer a full set of material solutions to create allow new smart medical devices and disposable healthcare products that are produced in high volume and deliver reliable in-application functionality.

Glucose Management

Henkel's conductive ink materials enable the production of glucose test strips that facilitate self-monitoring of blood glucose (SMBG) levels. These conductive materials are the primary component for glucose sensing functionality which directly impacts the patient’s well-being.

Continuous glucose management (CGM) is growing in effectiveness and implementation. CGM measures the glucose in blood and displays the date on a reader device. This allows patients to thoroughly monitor glucose levels for more timely insulin injections. Conductive sensing materials and skin-grade adhesives from Henkel are key enablers for reliable CGM skin patches.

Moisture Sensors

An increasing geriatric population, alongside rising healthcare costs, is driving the development of novel monitoring tools to help improve patient comfort and reduce expenses. Henkel is answering this call with multiple approaches, one of which is smart incontinence management through the use of cost-effective printable moisture sensors that can be worn comfortably and send real-time communication when replacement supplies are required.

Henkel conductive inks allow for the manufacturing of responsive, disposable healthcare products including smart diapers, smart bed pads, and industrial applications. Henkel’s electrically conductive materials can be directly applied by high-speed flexographic print processes onto thin, flexible materials used in the assembly of healthcare products, which further reduces cost by increasing throughput.

General Medical Assembly of Medical Electronic Devices

Henkel has developed a complete line of general medical assembly materials that facilitate the electrical connection, structural integrity, device protection, and thermal control required for small form factor, mission-critical medical products.

The medical materials portfolio includes: 

• Encapsulation, consisting of encapsulants, conformal coating, Glob top, potting and low pressure overmolding materials for the protection of electrical components against moisture and fluids.
• Underfill materials for protection of electronic components against impact and shock loads for applications such as in hearing aids and cardio or neuro devices.
• Thermally conductive materials and thermal management materials and shielding inks such as used in imaging equipment.
  
• Electrically conductive adhesives for higher reliability, higher robustness and higher flexible electrical connections, such as in diagnostic equipment and CT scanner.
• Solder materials for electrical connecting SMDs to the PCB, such as used on all electronic boards.