Get the latest from Ultralife, Accutronics & SWE

---

 

It seems nowadays that there is a rule, methodology and philosophy for everything.  Many of these rules have been around for decades so it raises the obvious question, 'are the old methods still relevant in an age of rapid innovation and uncertainty?'  This is especially pertinent for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) where even a small advantage can mean the difference between success and failure.  Here Prabhjit Singh, General Manager at Accutronics looks at the top methodologies and evaluates how OEMs can choose the best one for them.

Developing a new product is not easy.  The process of consultation, design, production, testing, logistics, integration and support can be challenging for even the best OEMs. This is made even more difficult in highly regulated industries such as the medical, security and defence markets.  Here, products must not only meet stringent regulations, but also perform in extreme environments, where resistance to temperature fluctuations, humidity and vibration shock is critical. 

 When asked how he developed new products, the late CEO of Apple, Steve Jobs, famously quipped that, "it's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times people don't know what they want until you show it to them." This very disruptive approach evidently worked for Apple and means that the company continues to produce some of the most desirable consumer products on the market.

• Which Methodology is right for you?

---

A recent presentation of findings at US hacker conference DerbyCon demonstrated that medical cybercrime is on the rise. 

Accutronics tackle the issues facing battery design, development and use in the medical and healthcare field.  We help Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) to better understand the possibilities and limitations of rechargeable battery technology in designing products for the medical sector.

Thanks to the digital revolution, technology in both our personal and professional lives is getting smaller and more powerful. For instance, new smart watches have more computing power than the Apollo moon landing space craft! The same applies to medical equipment; hospitals are replacing bulky analogue machines with more svelte, powerful devices. However, the march of digital technology through healthcare facilities is bound by the existing infrastructure, which was developed for analogue solutions, creating unique challenges for battery equipment.

Rob Phillips, Managing Director of Accutronics, a leading independent battery design company servicing the medical sector, provides a brief overview of standards and design issues relevant to designing in batteries (and associated battery chargers) for medical devices.

It’s usually impractical for companies other than the largest to employ dedicated battery specialists internally. For many businesses, major battery (and associated charger) designs occur only every several years. Yet battery and the associated charger technology is a complex field that requires investment in continual reskilling in technology, as well as an understanding of multiple standards and legislation. Keeping internal battery specialists on-hand is often uneconomical and also, while Medtech designers generally know medical device standards, in my experience they don’t have the same knowledge of battery or charger standards.

However, whether you engage with a third party battery and charger specialist or not, project managers responsible for specifying the batteries in a medical device (and being able to charge them) will benefit from understanding the basics of the standards involved, and what some of the more common (and expensive) design issues are, so they can be avoided.