FABIMED · Fabrication and Functionalization of BioMedical Microdevices

The aim of FaBiMed proposal is to improve and develop new manufacturing techniques, based on micromoulding, specific for biomedical microdevices. The project will be to reducing the cost of mass production of diagnosis and therapeutic micro devices which have a common problematic: medium sized batches, customization needs, micron-scale geometrical features. These include optofluidic sensors (MIR technology) used for different lab-on-chip diagnostic systems, and micro-needle arrays used for drug delivery and micropiezodevices for intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) and similar medical imaging techniques.This kind of medical microdevices lack nowadays of specific manufacturing techniques, and depend from conventional miniaturization methods inherited from silicon processing technologies, developed for the microelectronics industry. Such methods, based on expensive masters and masks, are only economic for high volume production, and prevent for applying the modern tendency of personalized medical devices.The development in this market is dominated by technology based SMEs, start-ups and spin-offs from academy, which have very strong product development capabilities, but depend on the existing technologies for the manufacturing, due to their difficulty for development their own materials processing equipment.