Biomedical electronics serving as physical environmental and emotional watchdogs

Over forty years of happy CMOS scaling brought the room-sized super-computer for the nerds into everyone's pocket, literally connecting every-body on earth. In an economy which is based on double digit growth, the obvious next step is to connect everything on earth. This move redirects the focus from electronics-for-infotainment to electronics helping to solve the mounting societal challenges our earth faces: better and more affordable health care for everyone, safer and more efficient transportation, cleaner and more sustainable environment. Realizing this requires abandoning the traditional keyboard/screen user interface to make the electronic devices autonomous, independent from a human in the loop, and to provide its services hidden in the background. In this paper, I will first explain why in the background operating electronics recently became feasible in the form of autonomous wireless sensor nodes. Next, I will present a technology roadmap, ranging from sensors measuring physical phenomena, via environmental sensors that combine physical with chemical monitoring, to ultimately emotional sensors that provide instantaneous and objective information about one's emotions. For those worrying about "big brother" possibilities, I will end the presentation with a concrete use case for psychiatric drug approval.