In
continuing coverage, the Los Angeles Times (11/6, Brown) "Booster
Shots" blog reports that on Sunday, researchers from the University of
Michigan presented an abstract at the American Heart Association's meeting on
the "energy harvesting device" they are developing. Lead researcher
M. Amin Karami explained that the device will ultimately, "take the
vibrations created by a heartbeat and convert them into enough electrical
energy to power a pacemaker." He said researchers used a
"piezoelectric harvester" to record "how much power they could
produce over 100 heart beats at differing heart rates." They found the
energy harvester could generate "more than 10 times the power required to
operate a pacemaker, as long as heart rate was between 20 and 600 beats per
minute," and it was "about half the size of the batteries used in
today's pacemakers." However, Karami said the study team, which "does
not yet have a prototype pacemaker using the energy harvester," still
needs to "conduct safety testing in animals and humans."
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