Bioelectronics is a branch of medical science that deals with the application of ideologies of biological sciences in electrical/electronic engineering. In simpler terms, bioelectronics is the combination of biology and electronics. This is an essential emerging field in medicine. Bioelectronics has led to the expansion of various devices such as the pacemaker and a wide variety of therapeutic imaging devices that are easily accessible. The nervous system transmits an endless number of signals to carry out various functions of the human body. This creates a highly lucrative growth prospect for the study of bioelectronics and the related market is projected to flourish over the next few years.

Some of the major tools associated with bioelectronics are bioelectromagnetics, robotics, sensors, and neural networks. Bioelectronics have been making a huge impact in the medicinal field from its early days, however, bioelectronics’ role in medical science is likely to grow at an incredible pace during the forecast period, touching disparate healthcare specialties such as vision disorders and spinal injuries. Wide-ranging research and development activities related to bioelectronics will aid in the increasing health care market by facilitating on-site diagnosis as well. Apart from life sciences and medical research, it is used in ecological monitoring as well, with requirement for the latter anticipated to rise speedily in the forecast period, owing to growing danger of global warming around the globe.

Increasing awareness about bioelectronics is one of the key factors that will drive the growth of the market. High prevalence of cardiovascular diseases and rising usage of artificial pacemakers will propel the growth of bioelectronics market in the coming years. Additionally, increasing demand for home care and customized medicine are some of the other key drivers of the bioelectronics market. Moreover, sensors industrialized by bioelectronics research are responsible for the rise in demand for the bioelectronics products.

Bioelectronics Market Taxonomy

On the basis of product type, the market is classified into:

Electrochemical biosensors

Piezoelectric biosensors

Thermal biosensors

Optical biosensors

On the basis of application, the global market is classified into:

Fabrication Templates

Biochips

Implantable Devices

Prosthetic

Artificial Organs

Pills

Surgical

Biofuel Cells

Molecular Motors

Rising demand for diagnostic tests and monitoring devices like cardiac pacemakers, devices for measuring blood glucose level, and other medical devices are expected to increase the market size. Increasing incidence of diabetes along with rising need to monitor blood glucose level is expected to impact the market optimistically. Advances in technology and growing innovation in the field are some of the other reasons that will drive the growth of the bioelectronics market over the forecast period.

Growing diabetic population and the increasing prevalence of heart diseases will drive the overall bioelectronics market

According to the Heart Foundation, in 2011, heart and other cardiovascular diseases led to 787 thousand fatalities in the U.S. alone. Moreover, as per International Diabetic Federation (IDF) around 415 million people suffered from diabetes in 2015. Since diabetic monitoring and control as well as heart failure patients need bioelectronics devices in the form of glucose monitoring devices, and artificial pacemakers, respectively, the market for bioelectronics product is likely to experience a huge surge in demand during the forecast period. This is attributed to rise in the number of patients suffering from the aforementioned diseases.

North America held the maximum share of the bioelectronics market, owing to large number of applications in various healthcare segments. Rising occurrence of several grave diseases due to sedentary lifestyle; existence of large number of R&D facilities; and escalating adoptability of refined and advanced products by healthcare professionals, clinicians and patients, the bioelectronics market will see a significant growth momentum in this region. Asia Pacific is expected to observe a considerable growth due to improvement in healthcare infrastructure as well as speedy economic growth in the course of the forecast period.

Some of the key players operating in the global bioelectronics market are F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd, Abbott laboratories, LifeSensors, Siemens Healthcare, Nova Biomedical Corporation and AgaMatrix. Some of the other companies operating in the market are Bioelectronics Corporation, Sotera wireless, Beckman Coulter, Bodymedia, Avago, Danaher Corporation, Medtronics, Omnivision Technologies, and Roche, Sensirion.

Key Developments

Increasing research and development of novel bioelectronics is expected to boost the market growth. For instance, in August 2019, researchers from Virginia Commonwealth University and Chongqing Technology and Business University reported development of a fully organic, integrated biosensor device using a conducting ink formed from the polymer PEDOT:PSS dispersed in a silk protein matrix, in the journal MDPI Biosensors.

Similarly, in August 2019, researchers from The State Key Laboratory of Bioelectronics of the Southeast University reported development a new physically threshold based on the sampling resolution of ECG signals for Sample Entropy, a method for assessing the regularity of physiological signals, in detecting cardiovascular diseases, in the journal MDPI Entropy.

In August 2019, researchers from University of California reported development of a wireless implantable gastrointestinal (GI) modulation system that can improving GI motility, in the journal MDPI Micromachines.