With innovative solutions from Molex and Murata, TTI’s Andy Kerr and John Sandy look at connectors and passives for imaging, monitoring and patient care.
The availability of basic healthcare and sanitation throughout much of the world has created higher rates of survival through childhood and longer adult life expectancy. This has generated a boom in the population in many countries and an accelerating upward shift in the proportion of people surviving into older age.
To provide better quality and cost-effective care, not only for the elderly but for all sectors of the population, an increasing emphasis is being put on the use of electronic equipment in medicine. In countries now industrialising and emerging from poverty there is strong growth in the demand for advanced medical equipment to increase the effectiveness of the finite medical resources available.
Throughout the world, spending on healthcare is forecast to substantially outpace GDP growth, from nine per cent worldwide in 2005 to 11 per cent by 2015. Sadly, the increased demand is not only for the elderly as ‘modern’ lifestyles have caused increases in diseases such as obesity, diabetes and heart disease. The availability and effectiveness of electronic healthcare equipment has led to new approaches in medicine to confront these issues, telemedicine for example. But there remain many challenges and opportunities in medical electronics.
Addressing the cycle
The cost-effectiveness of addressing the complete ‘care cycle’ rather than simply waiting for the patient to develop symptoms, is increasingly recognised, generating a demand for improved preventative screening systems. Substantial cost savings are made and patient welfare is improved when people treat themselves at home, creating a demand for smaller and more portable equipment such as home defibrillators, inhalers and diabetes care devices. Product innovation is the key to making electronic healthcare equipment more accessible and easy to use, enabling these new demands to be better met.
Electronic healthcare equipment can be categorised into four main sectors: diagnostic and imaging equipment; patient monitoring; therapeutic equipment and hospital and patient care. In all sectors, equipment manufacturers need access to high quality passive electronic components and interconnection systems suited to medical applications. The major electronics distributor TTI is addressing the needs of healthcare OEMs with innovative component solutions from key franchises Molex and Murata. Molex produces interconnect solutions and membrane switches and Murata manufactures a wide range of passive components.
Together with Molex and Murata, TTI aims to provide new component solutions to help address the challenges of developing advanced healthcare equipment. In diagnostic and imaging equipment, technology drivers include the move from analog to digital, real time imaging with improved image quality and computer aided detection. To address these issues, new equipment will use higher power levels and denser backplanes. The higher power levels will call for higher current connectors with better filtering in the power sections and more use of non-magnetic RF/fibre connectivity.
In patient monitoring, the application trends are toward portability, ultra-low power, remote testing, wireless technology and the use of non-invasive devices. Copper flex circuits with integrated membrane switches from Molex allow for compact design and easy cleaning/disinfection. For remote monitoring and data acquisition, Murata supplies RF coils, saw filters/resonators, chip antennae and complete Bluetooth modules.
Therapeutic equipment
Therapeutic equipment covers applications where treatment is applied to the patient. Some examples are feeding pumps, respirators, pacemakers and dialysis. The development of new equipment with increased portability, simpler user interfaces and disposable assemblies is enabling increased availability of treatment at home. Adding networking and wireless connectivity provides hospital staff with the capability to remotely monitor self administered treatment.
Hospital and patient care includes surgical equipment, prosthetics, hospital beds and after care. In the operating theatre surgeons now use powered surgical tools and advances in machine vision are enabling the use of robots to undertake surgical procedures.
However the avoidance of cross-infection is an absolute priority and electronic items coming in contact with patients must be capable of autoclave sterilisation. In the hospital ward the cleaning and disinfection of equipment is made easier by the increased use of fibre optic interfaces with over-moulded cables. Molex provides a range of over-moulded cables and custom solutions for medical interconnection applications.
The Molex range includes connectors, backplane products, processor and IC sockets, custom and non-magnetic RF/fibre/MID solutions, custom over-mould assemblies and copper flex/membrane switches. Murata produces a wide range of high end ceramic, passive electronic components and modules including capacitors, filters, sensors and piezo-electric devices.
TTI is undertaking a staff training programme together with Molex and Murata, covering the requirements of healthcare electronics. The tools and resources will be there to deliver application support for medical equipment developers, enabling them to produce the new generation of healthcare systems needed throughout the world.
Andy Kerr is European Product & Supplier Marketing Director for Discretes & Passives, and John Sandy is European Director of Supplier Marketing, Connectors at TTI.
