Medical Device Design & Development
INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVES
Medtronic Fighting For Minutes…While Losing Hours
We’ve all seen or heard commercials from the American Stroke Association (ASA) encouraging people who suspect they might be having a stroke to call 9-1-1 right away, because “time lost is brain lost.”. Stroke is the No. 5 cause of death in the United States, killing nearly 130,000 people a year. That’s one in every 20 deaths, according to the ASA. But even if you survive a stroke, you are not even close to being out of the woods.
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![Want Better Devices? Send Your Engineers Into The OR]( "Want Better Devices? Send Your Engineers Into The OR")
Want Better Devices? Send Your Engineers Into The ORBefore he was an “Outdoor Man” marketing sporting goods in the Rocky Mountains as the Last Man Standing, Tim (“The Tool Man”) Taylor did most of his work indoors — on a little show called Home Improvement. Fortunately for the often accident-prone know-it-all, he had a competent sidekick in the mild-mannered Al Borland, who often knew a better way to get things done properly.
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![Incorporating Accessibility Into Medical Device Design]( "Incorporating Accessibility Into Medical Device Design")
Incorporating Accessibility Into Medical Device DesignWhen incorporating human factors into medical device development, conducting user testing and gathering feedback from the device’s target end users is critical. To do this properly, the end user groups must be appropriately defined.
WHITE PAPERS & CASE STUDIES
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![AME_HKP_Turningto_Integrated]( "Turning To Integrated Driver Electronics For BLDCs")
Turning To Integrated Driver Electronics For BLDCsDespite advantages, brushless DC motors (BLDCs) have presented their own challenges in terms of technology, design, and capabilities. Typically, complex and bulky cabling has been required between motor and amplifier to attach discrete logic components “outside” the motor frame. With the latest advances in driver electronics that now can be integrated directly into brushless motor designs, BLDCs are evolving rapidly to become faster, smaller, more versatile, more controllable and more cost-effective.
Brushless motors have gained greater acceptance in industry for a wider range of applications previously dominated by brush commutated products. At the same time, manufacturers have further sought to challenge conventional wisdom by improving brushless motor design.
Motor designs have incorporated new components in new ways to help extend motor life, and new or improved materials have been tapped to promote motor quality and output. Current and future brush commutated DC motors continue to move in highly advanced directions.
A variety of active and passive approaches can be adopted to reduce electromagnetic interference (EMI) in systems that rely on precision motion control. The challenges are to maintain system integrity and DC motor performance without adding significant cost or weight to a subassembly.
The traditional method for mounting copper or silver graphite brushes in brush commutated DC motor and gearmotor assemblies has been to solder the brushes onto standard cantilever springs to enable the required constant contact with the commutator. However, this conventional spring design carries inherent drawbacks that can be overcome by housing the brushes within a specially designed cartridge and utilizing torsion springs to ensure desired even force over the life of a motor.
DESIGN COMPONENTS & SERVICES
Colder's new SRC connector is a unique small bore connector that eliminates the potential for misconnections with luer fittings. The intuitive design is simple to operate and provides a secure, leak-free connection.
Excelitas’ rear entry “reach-through” silicon APDs offer the best compromise in terms of cost and performance for applications requiring high speed and low noise photon detection from 400 nm up to 1100 nm. These APDs feature low noise, high quantum efficiency and high gain while maintaining reasonably low operating voltage. The active area varies from 0.5 mm to 3 mm to accommodate a large variety of applications including laser range finding, confocal microscopy, free space communication, fluorescence detection, DNA sequencing, and particle sizing.
Insert molding techniques can streamline the production of your next medical device and eliminate the need for additional secondary operations. This type of molding can result in consistency, stability, the potential for reduced size and weight, and design flexibility.
Corry Micronics' Gain Horn Antennas operate in the sub-gigahertz to over 100 GHz frequency range. These antennas can be custom manufactured for different applications, including but not limited to aerospace, military, wireless communications, and medical.
For more than 65 years, Caplugs has been a leader in plastic product protection and offers a variety of catalog and custom solutions designed specifically for the orthopedic market. As a qualified supplier to more than 1,300 medical customers including implant manufacturers, Caplugs protects vital components during shipping, storage, and processing.
MEDICAL DEVICE DESIGN & DEVELOPMENT
Medical device design and development is the cyclical process of creating a device for a specific task or set of tasks, and then continuously reevaluating its effectiveness and improving upon it until the device reaches obsolescence. Design and development begins with ideation and the creation of a concept that, if found to be both fiscally and clinically viable, is then designed, engineered, and prototyped. This preclinical period includes bench testing — accomplished through simulated use of the product — and animal testing, along with any necessary redesign work.
Throughout the process, the proposed medical device, and the process by which it will be manufactured, is examined for flaws that may negatively impact the device’s safety, market viability, regulatory acceptance, customer satisfaction, usability, or profitability. Any shortcomings are corrected, and the improvements applied to the final design. Due to the wireless connectivity capabilities of many modern medical devices, cybersecurity and interoperability also must be incorporated into the design. Clinical testing is conducted, using human subjects, to further expose flaws and confirm product strengths. Once both the product design and the manufacturing process have been validated and approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), production and commercialization of a device may begin.
LATEST HEADLINES
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Noninvasive Optical Sensors Provide Real-Time Brain Monitoring After Stroke
Each year, nearly 800,000 people in the U.S. experience a stroke, and almost 90 percent of those are ischemic strokes in which a clot cuts off blood flow to part of the brain. To prevent further injury, blood flow to the brain must be restored as quickly as possible.
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Embrace Becomes First FDA-Cleared Seizure-Monitoring Smart Watch
Empatica Inc has received clearance from the FDA for Embrace, its award-winning smart watch. Embrace uses AI (advanced machine learning) to monitor for the most dangerous kinds of seizures, known as "grand mal" or "generalized tonic-clonic" seizures, and send an alert to summon caregivers' help.
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Researchers Create Fiber Optic Sensors That Dissolve In The Body
For the first time, researchers have fabricated sensing elements known as fiber Bragg gratings inside optical fibers designed to dissolve completely inside the body.
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NUS Researchers Develop Wireless Light Switch For Targeted Cancer Therapy
A team of scientists from the National University of Singapore (NUS) has developed a way to wirelessly deliver light into deep regions of the body to activate light-sensitive drugs for photodynamic therapy (PDT).
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TU Wien Develops New Semiconductor Processing Technology
Extremely fine porous structures with tiny holes - resembling a kind of sponge at nano level - can be generated in semiconductors.
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Tyndall, Sanmina Partner To Develop Sub-GHz Wearable Health Monitoring Platform
Tyndall and Sanmina Corporation have announced a research collaboration, which will focus on the development of a novel wireless technology for a commercial wrist-worn health-monitoring platform.
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An Organ-On-A-Chip Device That Models Heart Disease
When studying diseases or testing potential drug therapies, researchers usually turn to cultured cells on Petri dishes or experiments with lab animals, but recently, researchers have been developing a different approach: small, organ-on-a-chip devices that mimic the functions of human organs, serving as potentially cheaper and more effective tools.
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Nanowire Device Holds Promise To Detect Cancer With A Urine Test
Cells communicate with each other through a number of different mechanisms. Some of these mechanisms are well-known: in animals, for example, predatory threats can drive the release of norepinephrine, a hormone that travels through the bloodstream and triggers heart and muscle cells to initiate a "fight-or-flight" response.
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Developing The First Pediatric Heart Valve Designed To “Grow” With The Child
Each year 40,000 babies in the U.S. are born with a congenital heart defect, often caused by a defective heart valve, which is estimated to account for 8,000 to 13,000 new cases in the U.S. alone.
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Mass Spectrometric Imaging Technique Makes Diagnosis Easier And Smarter
A team of researchers at DGIST has recently developed a technology which enables to acquire a high resolution mass spectrometry imaging in micrometer size of live biological samples without chemical pretreatment in the general atmospheric pressure environment.