Step-down Medical Device Charger

Cardiac pacemakers and other implantable medical electronic devices are powered by batteries that eventually weaken and must be replaced. Advances in the science of microcircuitry and better battery technology have brought to market the small and long-lasting devices that are today's state of the art. Battery life continues to be the limiting factor for these devices.

Stores are full of common devices that utilize "the Faraday effect" (electromagnetic induction) to generate enough power for a few minutes of radio or LED light. These manually powered induction chargers create current by shaking a tube or spinning a crank within which are magnets and a wire coil. A few seconds of movement give the internal battery enough of a charge to power a device for some minutes. The limiting factor of induction chargers is, you might guess, power to move them. Luckily, a few seconds suffice to create stored power, or you'd find your arm grew very tired in the process.

One's heart is, in essence, a perpetual motion machine. Powered by metabolically-derived picovolt capacitative discharges across membranes, biomechanical activity triggers local responses across millions of cells. The effect is to make organisms what they are, independent of their cellular environment, a sum greater than the whole of its parts. When organism meets medical device, the outcome is dependence by the organism on the quality of its devices. Third party intervention is needed to keep the recipient of a medical device on schedule for preventive maintenance and battery replacement. A recharger for medical device batteries would prolong recipients' independence appreciably.

Acknowledging the vast power of the beating heart, I propose to tap that resource for power generation. Ring the heart or its pericardium with a hula hoop instantiated with microcircuitry and magnets mounted on slides within. Each heartbeat twists the hoop, moving the magnets inside, and the mechanical process generates a second of electromagnetic induction. The resulting power gathered in coils attached to the hoops' microcircuitry is channeled back to a device battery by way of recharging circuitry. In effect, the heart powers its own trickle charger.

Users might free themselves from the need for follow up surgery by a few or by many years, if pacemaker battery power output matches the feedback produced within their induction hoop.