Significant Applications
In the history of the silicon based sensor business there
have been only four significant applications based upon generating significant
sales by serving a single application. The word "significant" being
defined as generating, or will generate, in excess of over one hundred
million dollars sales revenue. The number one sales generating application
is manifold absolute pressure sensors. This application has generated in
excess of one billion in sales. The next application, having generated
several hundred million in sales, is blood pressure. The third application
is crash sensors for automotive air bag applications. The fourth is the
newest application is automotive fuel vapor sensing. This application has
not yet generated over a hundred million in sales but will in the near
future.
Disposable Blood Pressure
This is an application that several people in the industry take credit for
having created. The history is as follows. In 1977 a representative of American
Hospital Supply (AHS) approached National Semiconductor for a $5.00 disposable
pressure sensor and was sent away for such a fool hardly request. The market
for such a device, at the time, was in the twenty dollar plus range. AHS
continued their work and the first successful disposable BP sensor appear
in 1979 manufacture for AHS by Gould. It used a silicon gage with a mechanical
force concentrator. The first true MEMS disposable sensor appeared on the
market in 1980 and was sold by Cobe Labs in kit form for $30.00 and used
a Honeywell sensor. A very nice baby blue package with a matching cable and
connector designed by Steve Hanlon at Cobe. The first high volume, low cost
sensors was manufactured by Spectramed and designed by Buzz Moran. By the
early eighties the Spectramed devices was the market leader. In the early
eighties Sorenson, now Abbott Critical Care, under the direction of Harlow
Christenson, started making inroads in the market using sensor die purchased
from several Silicon Valley companies and incorporating them into their package.
Today, Abbott owns about eighty percent of this market. Utah Medical, owned
and operated by Dean Walters, entered the market in the mid eighties with
an approach similar to Abbott and is now the second largest producer in this
market. Others that have participated include: Graphics Controls, Deseret
(now Warner-Lambert), Medex, and Healthdyne. All these companies have similar
designs tailored to meet a specific market need. This market developed as
follows. In the early eighties the majority of the market used reusable transducers
with disposable dooms. This require sterilization and replacement of the
doom. The disposable was sold as a lower cost solution. Only to be lower
cost require a bit of imagination for the hospitals to buy. DRG's, Diagnostic
Review Groups, imposed on the hospitals in the early eighties drove all disposable
applications. Under DRG's costs for disposable could be recovered from patients
but fixed costs could not. In the late eighties DRG's were replaced to a
large extent by procedural costs. Meaning a hospital got so much money for
a procedure and it did not matter what their costs were. This look like it
would cut the market for disposable and resurrect the reusable market. However,
another variable, AIDS appeared and anything touching blood needed to be
disposable. Thus any medical procedure where the patient is anesthetized
will have from one to three disposable blood pressure sensors.
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