Moderated by MPMN editor-in-chief Shana Leonard, the roundtable consisted of Jim Ohneck, vice president of sales and marketing (USA) at Valtronic Technologies (Solon, OH); Mitchell Gebheim, senior manager of product development at Benchmark Electronics (Angleton, TX); and Karthik Ramaswami, director of product development at EaglePicher Medical Power (Plano, TX).

MPMN: In honor of MPMN’s 25th anniversary, what do you cite as the most significant breakthrough in medical electronics and power management in the past 25 years?

Ohneck: There have been lots of innovations, but I think that the introduction of semiconductor technology into medical implants, especially ASICs, was paramount in making the medical electronics industry what it is today. This really enabled implants to become feasible, to shrink in size, and to require less power consumption, which took some pressure off of batteries. This was an incredible development that really pushed the whole medical electronics area. [Read the rest of this article.]