Different Market Sectors – Different Requirements
By Paolo Apicella, Molex Inc.

Four major market segments in the medical industry come under the spotlight in relation to the electronics industry, including patient monitoring, therapeutic equipment, diagnostic equipment, and imaging equipment. New medical technologies enable doctors to diagnose and treat patient illnesses earlier with home and point-of-care devices that allow providers to monitor the patient’s condition outside the hospital environment. Reliable equipment is critical to the successful care and safety of the patient, and interconnects and cable assemblies play a crucial role in the overall reliability of the system. Each sector has different requirements and critical factors.

Patient Monitoring
Increasingly, handheld monitors are used for testing in hospitals, doctors’ offices, and at home. PCB real-estate is critical within these portable devices, and manufacturers are selecting smaller wire-to-board, board-to-board, and FFC/FPC connectors to save space on their PCBs. Going forward, higher density data interfaces are adopted in medical equipment to ensure secure routing of data signals for both their internal and external interfaces. These interfaces can rely on standard connectors and cable assemblies, like USB, mini-USB, and micro-USB, or more customized solutions when specific requirements have to be met.

Therapeutic Equipment
Improved portability of therapeutic devices and simplicity ensure that they are both practical and safe. A broad range of fine-pitch wire-to-board, board-to-board and power connectors, and the ability to replace PCBs with copper flex assemblies, help manufacturers reduce the size and cost of equipment to make it suitable for home office use.

To optimize the user interface of therapeutic devices, it is advantageous to select an interconnect supplier who is able to develop custom keypad solutions, such as capacitive membrane switches, switches with embedded LEDs, or PCB-substrate front panel keypads (both passive and active designs), dome arrays (polyester and metal dome), or silicone rubber keypad assemblies, to the medical manufacturer.

Diagnostic and Imaging
Within MRI, CT, or ultrasound equipment, there is a strong need to create, manipulate, and store images in real time. This involves processing large amounts of data rapidly, which results in backplane, storage, and I/O connector speeds in excess of 5 Gbps. New backplane products are specifically designed with integrated internal shielding to offer excellent performance at these higher system and storage speeds. Similarly, newer digital display interfaces, such as DVI, HDMI, and Molex’s DisplayPort, are increasingly being adopted as standard interfaces for patient displays of imaging equipment, as they offer improved resolution over existing analog displays. Hospital networks to laboratory equipment applications require a broad range of industry standard cables and custom-designed harness assemblies.

The fast-growing medical industry needs a broader range of connector and cable assembly solutions than ever before. With various critical factors for the different sectors, like overall reliability of electronics, PCB real-estate, higher density, and reduced size and cost of equipment, it is a challenge for manufacturers and OEMs.

As a manufacturer of medical products, seek a supplier with a diverse portfolio of interconnect products that will meet your overall needs, such as a comprehensive portfolio of connectors, cable assemblies, capacitive and membrane switches, PCB-substrate front panel keypads, silicon rubber assemblies, high-density backplanes, and storage products, in addition to high-end services and fully-integrated harness solutions. In some situations, a global supplier may be an additional benefit.

The medical market is very diverse, with applications such as hearing aids, nurse call systems, glucose meters, nebulizers, ECG devices, respiratory tubes, and MRI machines. Selecting an innovative supplier who has experience with tried-and-true products in the medical market will provide confidence in your end product.