Towards a wireless medical smart card

Wireless data transmission has become an integral part of modern society and plays an increasingly important role in health care. Technology scaling is continuously increasing wireless data rates, thus allowing for more flexible high-speed interfaces, e.g., between medical imaging equipment and mass storage devices. However, one issue remains: The power consumption of high-speed wireless transceivers and non-volatile memory grows with the data rate. This prevents from innovations using these high-speed wireless interfaces in ultra-low power (or even energy-passive) medical equipment that can be used by patients without a heavy power source. Clear efforts are required to close this gap, i.e., to provide high-speed wireless solutions with reduced energy consumption per transmitted bit. As a very example, this work presents the concept of a wireless medical smart card that combines near field communication for authentication and low-speed signaling together with a 60GHz interface for fast wireless memory access in a single patient-owned ID card. The basic architecture, functionality and prospects of the concept are discussed. A power budget is calculated based on state-of-the-art technologies. To put the concept into practice, some necessary developments for a reduction of the power consumption are outlined.