Leverage Commercial Off-the-Shelf Tools to Create Verifiable Hardware and Software Solutions
The complexity of medical devices is ever increasing. Medical devices range from simple tools like a stethoscope to gene-sequencing machines and tele-operated surgical devices. As the devices become more and more complex, so does testing and risk assessment. Many are aware that the FDA’s medical device recall database reports a 17% increase from 2009. A medical device recall is the most...
Battery Fuel Gauge: Factual or Fallacy?
People often think of a battery as an energy-storage device that’s similar to a fuel tank dispensing liquid fuel. For simplicity reasons, this is somewhat accurate. However, measuring stored energy from an electrochemical device is far more complex. The battery fuel gauge is generally poorly understood, particularly in the medical field. While an ordinary fuel gauge measures liquid flow...
Micro Power Electronics Merger Could Be Boon for Medical Device Designers
Micro Power Electronics recently announced that Electrochem Solutions, a subsidiary of Greatbatch, has signed a definitive agreement to acquire the company. Micro Power supplies custom battery systems to the portable medical markets, among others. This has a few benefits for designers. One is that, with an expected growth in manufacturing, designers should be less concerned about needing a...
Be Aware of Risk Management in Batteries
A battery is a corrosive device that begins to fade the moment it leaves the assembly line. Its stubborn and unpredictable behaviour has left many users in awkward situations. Battery failure is common and up to 50% of system breakdowns are attributed to a failing battery. Much of this is avoidable, but even with the best of care, some batteries die early and scientists don’t know why....
LinkedIn Group Helping Medicine and Digital World Converge
The Wireless Health group on LinkedIn has been getting a lot of attention lately. Founded in 2009 by Paul Sonnier, the group has a steadily increasing user base that will likely hit 10,000 members this year. His Wireless Health group has also been praised in Computer World and MedCity News. Sonnier is also a mentor at Blueprint Health, a strategic advisor at Popper and Company, and an advisor at...
A Better Probe for Prostate Cancer Diagnosis
Prostate cancer is typically diagnosed through PSA determination followed by ultrasound-guided biopsies, but that method has some disadvantages, including the fact that it often requires multiple biopsies. As a contributor to our sister site EE Times writes, "Development of a method designed to localize the tumor, or a suspect zone, within the prostatic tissue during the biopsy would...
On Human Factors
As consumer electronics have gotten smaller, prettier, and easier to use, users of medical devices are looking for their devices to take on some of the same traits (and some, like the first insulin pump with a color touch screen, are meeting their expectations). That's where human factors comes in. Designing a medical device that works is no longer enough. It has to work for people. It needs to...
KNF Neuberger Adds Micropump to Product Line
The KNF Neuberger Type NMP05 diaphragm micropump for sampling air and gases combines high performance with precision miniature packaging, resulting in efficient and reliable operation for portable, battery-operated equipment, including industrial hygiene devices, air samplers, and medical analyzers. This miniature OEM pump measures 17 by 26 by 31 mm and weighs just 18 g. Features include a bolted...
Wind River Offers Immediate Android Capabilities for Accelerated Device Development
Wind River has packaged its Android expertise and technologies into three specialized software offerings: user experience, connectivity, and medical modules. This comes with the announcement of its Solution Accelerators for Android, a series of software modules that can help developers jumpstart their Android development and rapidly integrate compelling features and functionalities to their...
Inside the Dexcom Seven Plus Continuous Glucose Monitoring System
Worldwide, the population is aging as well as suffering from increasing levels of chronic illness. Increasingly, the chronically ill are encouraged to take more control of their treatment, including monitoring their condition and addressing it accordingly. Diabetes is a rapidly growing chronic illness that is impacting young and old alike, with the American Diabetes Association estimating that in...
Latest Intel Atom Processor Ups Performance While Reducing Power and Footprint
Intel announced the availability of its latest mobile Atom processor-based platform, formerly codenamed Cedar Trail. Designed to provide compact, on-the-go computing with extended battery life at a lower price point, the platform adds several new features. The design’s dedicated media engine enables full 1080p high-definition playback of videos and Blu-Ray content and includes additional...
Microchip Introduces Smallest, Lowest-Cost PIC32 Microcontrollers
Microchip Technology recently announced a new series of low pin count 32-bit PIC32 microcontrollers (MCUs) that provide 61 DMIPS of performance in packages as small as 5 by 5 mm. The PIC32 MX1 and MX2 MCUs are the smallest and lowest-cost PIC32 MCUs, and are the first PIC32s to feature dedicated audio and capacitive-sensing peripherals. Rated for operation up to 105°C, the PIC32 MX1 and MX2...
Outsourcing Pro Dishes on Keeping Costs under Control and Reducing Time to Market
At the Biomedevice trade show in San Jose last week, a member of the audience asked Joseph Heanue, president of contract manufacturer Triple Ring Technologies (Newark, CA) for advice on cutting costs and time to market. Heanue explained that his company had been giving increasing attention to lean manufacturing. "People have many views of how to do this but, I think, it comes down to being...
Semiconductor Solutions Set to Revolutionize Medical Implantable Devices
With circuit miniaturization/integration, lower power processes and architectures, plus great cost savings because of the likes of the iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, etc., the semiconductor solutions contained in handheld commercial product innovations are now able to find their way into medical implantables making the seemingly impossible into a realizable and viable solution in the human body....
FCC’s Best-Kept Secret on Medical Wireless Frequencies
A great deal has been written over the past few years bemoaning the lack of dedicated frequency bands for new wireless medical devices. Likewise, with the most recent initiative between the FDA and FCC in exploring the use of a variety of narrowband frequencies for a body area network, there has been great anticipation that a dedicated FCC-approved frequency band may be made available in the near...
First Insulin Pump with a Color Touch Screen Cleared by FDA
  The t:slim Insulin Delivery System has received FDA clearance. Photo courtesy of TANDEM DIABETES CARE Back in 2007, Amy Tenderich, an advocate for diabetes patients, wrote an open letter to Steve Jobs, asking him to have his company create a better insulin pump. Apple didn't bite, but today a pump that meets Tenderich's criteria (smaller, sexier) received FDA clearance...
Design Inspriation: Be a Tweaker
No, I'm not advocating drug use. I just read this New Yorker story by Malcolm Gladwell, in which he makes the case that Steve Jobs' genius wasn't inventing—it was editing. Gladwell relates how many of the "inventions" attributed to Jobs were actually conceived by others. The Apple founder didn't invent the mobile phone, he writes. Instead, Jobs looked at what was...
DSP-based software toolkit ups performance and image quality for medical imaging applications
Texas Instruments announced support of its free, easy-to-use medical imaging software toolkit (STK), a collection of imaging algorithms targeted for TI’s industry leading TMS320C66x digital signal processors (DSP) generation. Complementing TI’s full portfolio of analog and embedded processing solutions for real-time medical imaging, the upgraded toolkit offers image processing kernels...
TCP/IP stack runs at near wire speed
Express Logic recently reported that its NetX TCP/IP stack has achieved 94 Mbits/s, a 94% wire speed on Freescale’s ARM Cortex-M4-based Kinetis processor. The Kinetis has a 100-Mbit/s Ethernet port, which enables transfers at up to wire speed. Generally, TCP/IP stacks are less than 100% efficient, leading to performance well below wire speed. To facilitate rapid data transfer, the closer to...
A Tear Down of the Advantech HIT-W121 Touchscreen Terminal
Figure 1. The HIT-W121 slim, touchscreen terminal, with its “bezel-less” design is suited for use in medical environments. I’ve written my share of tear down articles before, but this is my first for a device aimed at the medical market. If you’re not familiar with the term, a tear down is an analysis of the design of a shipping-end...
Microchip puts 8-bit MCUs with integrated configurable logic into 6- to 20-pin packages
Microchip Technology announced several new 8-bit PIC microcontrollers (MCUs) that feature configurable logic and a high level of peripheral integration in 6- to 20-pin packages. The PIC10F(LF)32X and PIC1XF(LF)150X MCUs each feature new peripherals, including configurable logic cells (CLC), complementary waveform generators (CWG), and numerically controlled oscillators (NCO). The CLC peripherals...
STMicroelectronics and MTL unveil ultra-low-voltage system-on-chip
STMicroelectronics and the Microsystems Technology Laboratories (MTL) of Massachusetts Institute of Technology presented the results of an advance R&D project targeting a low-power microprocessor technology at this year’s European Solid-State Circuits Conference in Helsinki, Finland. The voltage-scalable 32-bit microprocessor System-on-Chip (SoC) combines excellent peak performance...
Atmel launches tiny low-frequency RF IDIC package for direct coil mounting
Atmel announced the availability of an ultra-small XDFN (extremely thin dual flat no leads) package including a 363-bit read/write transponder IDIC. Measuring 2 by 1.5 by 0.37 mm, the transponder IDIC (ATA5577M1) is a high-volume, low-frequency (LF, 100-150kHz) RFID device designed for small tag applications. The two coil wires can directly be soldered onto the two pads of the package and mounted...
Touchless Mouse Helps Fight Contamination in Medical Environments
Qualstar announced the first model of a series of products based on its patent-pending touchless pointing technology. Called Topo Jojo, it represents a new approach to preventing contamination in clinical environments. Unlike traditional human interface devices, Topo Jojo uses infrared sensor technology to detect a finger’s motion in the air to control a PC display cursor.  Touchless...
Wind River introduces software platform with compliance documentation
Wind River is the next major operating system (OS) vendor to understand the value of having an enriched medical offering. The company recently introduced a platform for medical devices, which is part of a comprehensive software portfolio designed for medical device development, including those devices requiring premarket notification, FDA 510(k), or the more stringent Premarket Approval. The...