When Embedded Systems meet Life Sciences: Microfluidic Biochips for Real-Time Healthcare

Biochips are cyber-physical system with realistic potential to improve the healthcare process, e.g., by providing faster disease diagnosis and at-home direct treatment. We review the area of biochips on its way to becoming a strong research field. However, for the real breakthrough to happen, a stronger collaboration among disciplines is needed. Thus, we organized this tutorial at Embedded Systems Week, to inform researchers about the potential of biochips. We presented the vision, the research challenges and an overview of the design automation as well as of the fabrication work. We show how the conventional methods in embedded systems can be applied to biochips to optimize their execution and design. Besides that, we conducted a hands-on lab that allowed the participants to get in direct contact with biochips. The participants were highly inspired and we hope their interest will result in fruitful collaborations.