Pacemaker powered by light: new research

As an embedded engineer with about 12 years of battery life, I've thought about this topic a fair amount. It would be neat to somehow integrate a super capacitor capable of powering the device for a day or two, and an inductive charger able to top it off in just a few seconds. This could ideally be done via a standard smart phone inductive charger. Then, reduce the size of the primary cell to cover just a couple years as a backup. For a younger person looking at many decades of pacemaker operation, that could save them from a number of surgeries, as relatively minor as they are.

This is interesting. They're replacing the pacemaker's leads with optical fiber, with a tiny solar cell at the end. They send a pulse of light down the fiber optic cable, causing the solar cell to convert it to enough charge to "capture" the muscle.

Pacemaker leads don't just deliver charge, though. They're used to measure the heart's natural electrical activity so that the pacemaker can synchronize its pulses. I suppose that's something that can be done remotely through a more traditional ECG electrode placement.

This is pretty neat. Pacemaker leads are an amazing piece of engineering, but being able to place leads non-invasively through a syringe would be a huge advancement. I also suspect the fiber optic could be made to last significantly longer.

It's not clear from the article how the light will be passed to this device under the skin?

"Dont turn off the light, I might die!"