OREANDA-NEWS. March 22, 2011. Mart Min, an electronics professor at Tallinn University of Technology, has been nominated by a European panel for Inventor of the Year 2011 for his new methods for measuring and use of electrical bioimpedance in medicine and technology.

The inventions developed by Min and colleagues have been granted four European patents.

The inventions are in use in the Swedish-American owned medical technology company St. Jude Medical, which makes heart pacemakers, in Tallinn University of Technology and its spinoff Smartimplant and the ELIKO technology development centre.

The inventions are also being used to develop equipment for assaying the metals used for euro coins.

Besides quickly authenticating metal content, the method is well-suited to diagnosing electric battery life and making medical microimplants based on bio-MEMS technology. It can also be used to diagnose heart disease in the early stages.