MICROCHIPS that go into ventilators saw a spike in demand recently as more of those machines are needed for the treatment of the Covid-19 patients in hospitals worldwide. To date, over 4 million people are confirmed infected with this contagious virus.
Key ASIC, a local company that designs and markets application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) chips, is one company that sees such demand.
Ventilators are largely computerised machine with multiple chips and display monitor. However, the next generation of the ventilators will have to design with the Internet of Medical Thing and Artificial Intelligence technologies to meet the new requirements as experienced in this pandemic.
The global market is forecast to grow from less than US$4 billion in 2019 to an astonishing market size of US$26.66 billion by 2027 due to the pandemic.
Key ASIC's chairman Eg Kah Yee, said the company has started the design platform of the next generation of the ventilators that would be powered by the latest Internet of Medical Things and AI technologies so that the ventilators can provide significantly better therapeutic effect to the patients and at the same time enabling the frontline healthcare professionals to control the ventilators and monitor the patients from a distance or remotely, to significantly reduce the risk of infection of these heroic workers in the hospitals.
"A total new generation of intelligent equipment in the hospitals based on IoT and AI technologies is needed to deal with the extremely contagious and increasingly complex diseases," he said.
"Since the outbreak of the pandemic, we experienced orders soaring by multiple times for the chips that are used in the ventilators. With the number of infections still climbing in many countries and some are sharper than others, we foresee the demand continues to be strong for the rest of the year and perhaps next year as well," said , Taiwan-based RAiO International's CEO, C.T. Su.
"Based on the models, experts are predicting that it is likely to have a second wave of infection once the lock down is relaxed in many countries," he added.
In addition to RAiO, there are two other Key ASIC's customers that have chips used in the ventilators.
"The fab capacity is limited due to Movement Control Order but we reprioritised and managed to step up our production as soon as we received the request. We are definitely taking the social responsibility role in participating in the life saving process in this pandemic," said Silterra's CEO, Firdaus Abdullah.
Since the vaccine in the development for Covid-19 is estimated to be about 18 to 24 months away before it is safe to be used, the disease is expected to stay on for some time and infection will continue when the economy opens up, according to the medical experts.