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German company’s implantable chip to run on energy harvested from cardiac cells.

Celtro envisions a leadless pacemaker with continuous energy harvesting driving sensing, monitoring and pacing, as well as data gathering. (Source: Celtro)
By Adele Hars
What’s at stake?
The pacemaker envisioned by Celtro is both leadless and battery-free. The company sees a big market opportunity, but there are miles to go to get there. A prototype is three years away.
Every year, about a million people around the world get a pacemaker implant – and every single one of those implants is battery powered. Celtro, an early-stage startup in Dresden, Germany, aims to create a new generation of pacemakers that run on energy harvested continuously and directly from the biochemical reactions that produce energy in cardiac cells. Following Celtro’s recently announced seed-funding round, the Ojo-Yoshida Report had the opportunity to speak with the CEO, Gerd Teepe.