White Electronic Designs Corporation is leveraging its defence industry experience and expertise to develop high-reliability electronic components, interfaces and modules for the growing portable medical device market.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there will be an expected 40 million persons in the U.S. over the age of 65 by 2010, driving the need for portable medical devices, especially for home use.
The portable medical device market is inherently driven by the same requirements and expectations as the defence segment such as high quality and reliability, shorter development cycles, a well-defined and documented supply chain and extended product lifecycles.
“Medical instrumentation, such as therapeutic devices, patient monitors, electrodes, scanners and lab equipment, demand unfailing reliability and precise measurement,” said Jeff Osmun, Vice President of Worldwide Sales & Marketing for White Electronic Designs Corporation (WEDC).
“Those requirements must be balanced with the ability to design products that precisely fit the application. Our diverse set of products and capabilities is uniquely designed to deliver both.”
White Electronic Designs Corporation designs and manufactures innovative biosensors, a medical series CompactFlash cards, easy-to-use keyboards/keypads and optically enhanced LCD displays that are designed to work within sensitive medical environments and applications:
Biosensors and electrodes: Medical electrodes and biosensors provide the ability to track the electrical impulses of an irregular heartbeat; sensors and test strips to keep an eye on a patient's blood pressure, glucose range or oxygen levels and MRI systems to provide doctors with a better view of various internal organs.
White Electronic Designs Corporation’s medical electrode and innovative biosensor manufacturing capabilities provide additional advantages for meeting specific medical requirements. Earlier this year, White Electronic Designs Corporation was awarded a contract worth more than $3 million for its design and manufacture of a test strip for a blood monitoring application.
Diagnostic devices: Diagnostic devices are typically critical to the health and/or welfare of a patient. White Electronic Designs Corporation develops components such as enhanced LCD displays, custom membrane keypads and medical CompactFlash memory cards.
White Electronic Designs Corporation can also provide standard and custom electronic contract manufacturing services for the design and development of these precise and critical end-user applications.
Patient care: Advances in medical technology are quickly evolving the devices and processes used to provide patient care.
White Electronic Designs Corporation’s medical CompactFlash memory cards and high-reliability memory modules, enhanced and touchscreen-enabled LCDs, and custom membrane and elastomer keypads and interfaces drive greater innovation in medical device designs.
White Electronic Designs Corporation has recently released a whitepaper on the use of CompactFlash cards with portable monitoring devices such as Holter ECG recorders.
The whitepaper, entitled - Is all compactflash really created equal?, gives a brief overview of CompactFlash technology and some guidelines for helping medical device design engineers select the best CompactFlash technology for their applications.