This particular energy-havesting pacemaker has been tested ‘in vivo’ or, as some like to say, ‘on animal models’. From an Aug. 31, 2014 European Society of Cardiology news release (also on EurekAlert),
A new batteryless cardiac pacemaker based on an automatic wristwatch and powered by heart motion was presented at ESC Congress 2014 today by Adrian Zurbuchen from Switzerland. The prototype device does not require battery replacement.
Mr Zurbuchen, a PhD candidate in the Cardiovascular Engineering Group at ARTORG, University of Bern, Switzerland, said: “Batteries are a limiting factor in today’s medical implants. Once they reach a critically low energy level, physicians see themselves forced to replace a correctly functioning medical device in a surgical intervention. This is an unpleasant scenario which increases costs and the risk of complications for patients.”
…
Four years ago Professor Rolf Vogel, a cardiologist and engineer at the University of Bern, had the idea of using an automatic wristwatch mechanism to harvest the energy of heart motion. Mr Zurbuchen said: “The heart seems to be a very promising energy source because its contractions are repetitive and present for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Furthermore the automatic clockwork, invented in the year 1777, has a good reputation as a reliable technology to scavenge energy from motion.”
The researchers’ first prototype is based on a commercially available automatic wristwatch. All unnecessary parts were removed to reduce weight and size. In addition, they developed a custom-made housing with eyelets that allows suturing the device directly onto the myocardium (photo 1).
The prototype works the same way it would on a person’s wrist. When it is exposed to an external acceleration, the eccentric mass of the clockwork starts rotating. This rotation progressively winds a mechanical spring. After the spring is fully charged it unwinds and thereby spins an electrical micro-generator.
To test the prototype, the researchers developed an electronic circuit to transform and store the signal into a small buffer capacity. They then connected the system to a custom-made cardiac pacemaker (photo 2). The system worked in three steps. First, the harvesting prototype acquired energy from the heart. Second, the energy was temporarily stored in the buffer capacity. And finally, the buffered energy was used by the pacemaker to apply minute stimuli to the heart.
The researchers successfully tested the system in in vivo experiments with domestic pigs. The newly developed system allowed them for the first time to perform batteryless overdrive-pacing at 130 beats per minute.
Mr Zurbuchen said: “We have shown that it is possible to pace the heart using the power of its own motion. The next step in our prototype is to integrate both the electronic circuit for energy storage and the custom-made pacemaker directly into the harvesting device. This will eliminate the need for leads.”
He concluded: “Our new pacemaker tackles the two major disadvantages of today’s pacemakers. First, pacemaker leads are prone to fracture and can pose an imminent threat to the patient. And second, the lifetime of a pacemaker battery is limited. Our energy harvesting system is located directly on the heart and has the potential to avoid both disadvantages by providing the world with a batteryless and leadless pacemaker.”
This project seems the furthest along with regard to its prospects for replacing batteries in pacemakers (with leadlessness being a definite plus) but there are other projects such as Korea’s Professor Keon Jae Lee of KAIST and Professor Boyoung Joung, M.D. at Severance Hospital of Yonsei University who are working on a piezoelectric nanogenerator according to a June 26, 2014 article by Colin Jeffrey for Gizmodo.com,
… Unfortunately, the battery technology used to power these devices [cardiac pacemakers] has not kept pace and the batteries need to be replaced on average every seven years, which requires further surgery. To address this problem, a group of researchers from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) has developed a cardiac pacemaker that is powered semi-permanently by harnessing energy from the body’s own muscles.
The research team, headed by Professor Keon Jae Lee of KAIST and Professor Boyoung Joung, M.D. at Severance Hospital of Yonsei University, has created a flexible piezoelectric nanogenerator that has been used to directly stimulate the heart of a live rat using electrical energy produced from small body movements of the animal.
… the team created their new high-performance flexible nanogenerator from a thin film semiconductor material. In this case, lead magnesium niobate-lead titanate (PMN-PT) was used rather than the graphene oxide and carbon nanotubes of previous versions. As a result, the new device was able to harvest up to 8.2 V and 0.22 mA of electrical energy as a result of small flexing motions of the nanogenerator. The resultant voltage and current generated in this way were of sufficient levels to stimulate the rat’s heart directly.
I gather this project too was tested on animal models, in this case, rats.
Gaining some attention at roughly the same time as the Korean researchers, a French team’s work with a ‘living battery’ is mentioned in a June 17, 2014 news item on the Open Knowledge website,
Philippe Cinquin, Serge Cosnier and their team at Joseph Fourier University in France have invented a ‘living battery.’ The device – a fuel cell and conductive wires modified with reactive enzymes – has the power to tap into the body’s endless supply of glucose and convert simple sugar, which constitutes the energy source of living cells, into electricity.
Visions of implantable biofuel cells that use the body’s natural energy sources to power pacemakers or artificial hearts have been around since the 1960s, but the French team’s innovations represents the closest anyone has ever come to harnessing this energy.
The French team was a finalist for the 2014 European Inventor Award. Here’s a description of how their invention works, from their 2014 European Inventor Award’s webpage,
Biofuel cells that harvest energy from glucose in the body function much like every-day batteries that conduct electricity through positive and negative terminals called anodes and cathodes and a medium conducive to electric charge known as the electrolyte. Electricity is produced via a series of electrochemical reactions between these three components. These reactions are catalysed using enzymes that react with glucose stored in the blood.
Bodily fluids, which contain glucose and oxygen, serve as the electrolyte. To create an anode, two enzymes are used. The first enzyme breaks down the sugar glucose, which is produced every time the animal or person consumes food. The second enzyme oxidises the simpler sugars to release electrons. A current then flows as the electrons are drawn to the cathode. A capacitor that is hooked up to the biofuel cell stores the electric charge produced.
I wish all the researchers good luck as they race towards a new means of powering pacemakers, deep brain stimulators, and other implantable devices that now rely on batteries which need to be changed thus forcing the patient to undergo major surgery.
Self-powered batteries for pacemakers, etc. have been mentioned here before: