Global Medical Analog Front Ends Market Research Report 2023-Competitive Analysis, Status and Outlook by Type, Downstream Industry, and Geography, Forecast to 2029

Global Medical Analog Front Ends Market Research Report 2023-Competitive Analysis, Status and Outlook by Type, Downstream Industry, and Geography, Forecast to 2029

An analogue front-end, also known as an analogue front-end controller or AFE, is a collection of analogue signal conditioning circuitry that uses sensitive analogue amplifiers, frequently operational amplifiers, filters, and occasionally application-specific integrated circuits for sensors, radio receivers, and other circuits to provide the flexible and programmable electronics functional block required to connect a variety of sensors to an antenna, an analogue-to-digital converter, or, in some cases, a microcontroller. An analogue front-end system often has well-defined input signal characteristics, dynamic range, and needed data rate while reducing power consumption. Medical analogue front-end such as 4-channel AFE, 16-channel AFE and 32-channel AFE is built for specific medical application such as ultrasound imaging, vital sign sensing, etc. In general, medical AFEs include analogue amplifiers, operational amplifiers, filters, sample and hold circuits, and sometimes even application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs).

Market Overview:

The latest research study on the global Medical Analog Front Ends market finds that the global Medical Analog Front Ends market reached a value of USD 304.93 million in 2022. It’s expected that the market will achieve USD 1115.26 million by 2028, exhibiting a CAGR of 24.13% during the forecast period.

COVID-19 epidemic has had a negative impact on the medical analog front-end industry, with a decrease in market growth in 2020, but a lesser overall impact and a return to normal in 2021. During the new coronary epidemic, medical resources were crowded and patients underwent fewer ultrasound and vital sign sensing exams, while at the same time, the market's supply chain was also affected. Many in-clinic services, such as routine physicals, cancer screenings, and other preventative care measures have been nearly eliminated during this public health emergency. The reduction in preventative care is due to limited hospital capacity and the fear of infections while at the hospital. The delay in addressing non-COVID-19 issues may also be hurting the overall public health. The public health emergency is expected to last for months, maybe even more than a year, during which time patients may suffer and even die from health issues that could have been prevented with proper preventive care.

Emergency departments (ED) and hospitals became inundated with patients with COVID-like symptoms while simultaneously, ED visits for other presentations dropped dramatically. Efforts by local governmental officials to minimize hospital bed utilization for non-COVID purposes were accomplished by temporary stay orders on non-critical surgeries and medical procedures, as well as loosening regulation on remote interaction with healthcare providers, such as the use of telemedicine. Patient attitudes towards pursuing medical care were undoubtedly influenced by fear of contraction of COVID-19 as the pandemic threatened to overwhelm city hospitals. COVID-19 had a drastic impact on the utilization of emergency department ultrasounds performed by the radiology department, with a decrease in total exams performed and changes in patient demographics.

Market Opportunity and Drivers Analysis

The advances in emerging technologies expanded healthcare with a paradigm shift in treatment options. There is a growing need for wireless health-monitoring systems that uses portable and wearable low-power devices for sensing biopotential signals. Innovations in sensors and advances in semiconductor technologies are enabling the development of portable and wearable devices that can capture and record biopotential signals through out-of-hospital settings.

Demand for portable health and wellness products has dramatically increased as individuals have become more engaged and proactive in their healthcare. For example, many of today's smartphones and wearables (e.g., smartwatches, rings, and patches) incorporate health-centric sensors that have tremendous potential for early detection and real-time monitoring of health disorders in the comfort of one's daily routine. In addition, such devices can detect possible diseases like tachycardia (fast heart rate), bradycardia (slow heart rate), arrhythmia (often changed heart rate), and others. The contractions and relaxations of the heart while it pumps blood can be viewed as electrical activities and hence, the signals or pulses are shown as waveforms. However, the controllers employed in a heart rate monitor can only interpret binary data, that is, digital signals. Hence, an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) is needed. Moreover, the signal needs to be amplified and filtered to remove noise. This is why AFEs are so important. They contain all the necessary components and circuitry to perform signal conditioning on the signals that come right from the sensors.

The small form factor and need for continuous biosignal acquisition, like the electrocardiogram (ECG), imposes stringent power budgets. Energy-efficient designs are hence critical for long-lasting operation. From a low-power perspective, an analog front-end (AFE) comprising a low-noise amplifier and an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) followed by local feature extraction (e.g., using either analog or digital circuitry) to reduce/remove the power-hungry RF transmission is widely accepted as the state-of-the-art architecture for ECG acquisition today. However, the AFE power consumption is fixed at design time and primarily driven by the noise requirement in such a system. The power of such AFEs can vary from the range for diagnostic quality ECG recording to a few nW for low-accuracy sensors, thus exhibiting a power/accuracy trade-off. AFE design that achieves data-dependent power savings by dynamically switching modes in an agile fashion to trade power with performance. The AFE was operated to selectively capture various ECG features like the QRS complex P-wave and T-wave with higher precision. A 2.5× power reduction was achievable by employing an agile, dynamic QRS-only reconfiguration of the AFE. Comprehensive system performance characterizations were performed using ECG records from standard databases to establish the feasibility of using the LMS predictor on the ECG's quasi-periodicity and demonstrate data-dependent savings without compromising the eventual feature extraction accuracy.

The high-performance portable ultrasound imaging system is demanded by a wide variety of point-of-care applications. Medical users demand portable ultrasound systems to integrate most features of traditional cart-based systems with comparable performance. For example, color Doppler and continuous-wave Doppler become standard image modes on portable systems. Accordingly, portable system designers require semiconductor companies to provide AFE solutions that can meet performance requirements within strict size and power limits.

New architectures with advanced semiconductor technologies are always the key driving force to overcome previous technical barriers and enable ultrasound system designers to accomplish what they couldn't do in the past. Ultrasound system minimization and improvement have been proven in the past several years. One of the main driving forces for portable ultrasound system minimization and improvement is advanced semiconductor technology. Besides, transducer technology is further enhancing system sensitivity and reduces system cost. Corresponding silicon processes were selected for achieving low power, low noise, and compact size in ultrasound analog front-end (AFE) design. The combination of bipolar and CMOS processes achieves significant power, noise, and size reduction, as well as superior CW performance.

Region Overview:

North America had the highest growth rate of all regions.

Company Overview:

Analog Devices (Maxim Integrated) is one of the major players operating in the Medical Analog Front Ends market, holding a share of 16.45% in 2022.

Analog Devices, Inc., also known simply as Analog, is an American multinational semiconductor company specializing in data conversion, signal processing, and power management technology, headquartered in Wilmington, Massachusetts. Maxim Integrated develops innovative analog ICs for the automotive, industrial, healthcare, mobile consumer, and cloud data center markets, which is a subsidiary of Analog Devices.

Texas Instruments Incorporated is an American technology company headquartered in Dallas, Texas, that designs and manufactures semiconductors and various integrated circuits, which it sells to electronics designers and manufacturers globally. Texas Instruments designs manufacture, tests, and sells analog and embedded semiconductors that help nearly 100,000 customers around the globe create differentiated applications in markets that include industrial, automotive, personal electronics, communications equipment, and enterprise systems.

Segmentation Overview:

Among different product types, 4-channel segment is anticipated to contribute the largest market share in 2027.

Application Overview:

By application, the Vital Sign Sensing segment occupied the biggest share from 2017 to 2022.

Key Companies in the global Medical Analog Front Ends market covered in Chapter 3:

Texas Instruments
Analog Devices(Maxim Integrated)
Ams AG

In Chapter 4 and Chapter 14.2, on the basis of types, the Medical Analog Front Ends market from 2018 to 2029 is primarily split into:

4-channel
16-channel
32-channel
Others

In Chapter 5 and Chapter 14.3, on the basis of Downstream Industry, the Medical Analog Front Ends market from 2018 to 2029 covers:

Ultrasound Imaging
Vital Sign Sensing
Others

Geographically, the detailed analysis of consumption, revenue, market share and growth rate, historic and forecast (2018-2029) of the following regions are covered in Chapter 8 to Chapter 14:

North America (United States, Canada)
Europe (Germany, UK, France, Italy, Spain, Russia, Netherlands, Turkey, Switzerland, Sweden)
Asia Pacific (China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, India, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia)
Latin America (Brazil, Mexico, Argentina)
Middle East & Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, South Africa)