There is considerable activity currently in the area of Bio-sensors. A complete point-of-care system for myocardial infarction is in an advanced stage of development. The system under development monitors the molecular markers to detect cardiac attacks, especially incipient cardiac attacks that go undetected before major/fatal attacks occur. The system comprises of "infarcSens" or "iSens", which is a cantilever & molecular FET based affinity biosensor array for sensing myocardial infarction & subsequent cardiac status prognosis, using a suite of molecular markers. The sensing electronics and the associated data management software, for tracking the markers with time required for creating an epidemiological database, is also currently being developed. In addition to this activity, a Silicon-Locket is being developed for continuous monitoring of various heart parameters. The group has made three versions of the locket (this is single lead with onboard storage for a day), with appropriate hardware & software interfaces for downloading to a PC. TCS has demoed these at varios places and this should be undergoing field trials in hospitals soon.
       Projected activities: Medical and environmental monitoring is one of the most important applications of research and development that is conducted worldwide. Nano sensors and systems for such applications are amongst the most promising areas for nanoelectronics in the near term. Nano structures and devices with nanostructured materials are used for both preprocessing analytes and sensing specific ananlytes. We propose to develop 2 or 3 chip solutions for use in medical diagnostics and/or environmental monitoring. One chip of the set, with the analyte preprocessing and sensing structures, will be made in the nanofab created; the other chips would be standard microcontrollers or chips fabbed in standard foundries. If needed, an rf local area network for sensor data exchange to a webserver will also be prototyped. The structures and devices that will be explored are: a silicon or polymeric filters with micro/nano sized sieving structures; micro/nano fluidic systems for bio-object sorting; a micro PCR; single chip electrophoresis system; a single chip (with external light source) SPR system with nanoscale analyte wells (for multiple analyte assays); and affinity and catalytic sensors with deep submicron structures for better fuctionality and response time.