MEMS innovator targets wireless health

by R. Colin Johnson
Contributing Editor, MEMS Investor Journal

The West Wireless Health Institute (WWHI, San Diego, Calif.) has recruited MEMS pioneer Mehran Mehregany to head its engineering department. WWHI aims to lower medical costs with wireless telemedicine devices that monitor and supervise a patient's healthful activities “around the clock” while they are at home.

The West Wireless Health Institute was founded in 2009 with a $45 million grant from the Gary and Mary West Foundation -- a medical research organization that aims to cut health care costs with home oriented wireless devices. Late last year the institute hired Mehregany as its executive vice president of engineering and chief of engineering research. And earlier this month an additional $20 million was allotted to support his biomedical engineering research efforts and to support a postdoctoral program which aims to train the next generation of leaders in wireless health care.

"My career has been spent developing sensor and actuator technology -- miniaturizing the sensing actuation in the form of microsystems to deploy them in a ubiquitous and non-intrusive way. To leverage that expertise into health applications and see its convergence with wireless technology, cloud computing and social networks is very exciting," said Mehregany about his mission at the West Wireless Health Institute. "Microsystems technology will help drive individualized medicine by enabling noninvasive, miniature sensors that can be placed on or in a patient's body to manage all types of diagnostics and therapy remotely through a cellular or body area network connection."

Mehregany earned his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and started his career pioneering MEMS systems as a consultant to the Robotic Systems Research Department at AT&T Bell Laboratories, after which he joined the Department of Electrical Engineering and Applied Physics at Case Western Reserve University. During his long career in MEMS he founded Advanced MicroMachines Incorporated (Cleveland, Ohio) which developed aerospace applications until the company was acquired by the Goodrich Corp., after which he co-founded FLX Micro, Inc. (Cleveland) which developed silicon carbide sensors for high-temperature applications and NineSigma, Inc. (Cleveland) which provides tools and services by tapping a global network of innovators.