Powering Healthcare
Relentless global demand for medical and healthcare equipment offers unprecedented opportunity for innovators who can get to market rapidly with new products. Characterised by an uncompromising requirement for safety, medical equipment requires power supply solutions that reliably deliver clean and stable power, reducing the risk of patient harm or equipment failure.
Developers of all categories of medical equipment must have access to specialist power electronics expertise to make the right choices when designing the power supply for the end application. With our broad power offering and our team of dedicated experts, Avnet Silica are here to help you weigh your power solution options and decide which work best for you.
Power: the heart of medical electronics
Medical power supply solutions are integral to all types of medical instrumentation, from diagnostic, imaging, and monitoring equipment to home medical devices and wearables. With each equipment category presenting specific power supply requirements, the designer must make informed technology choices early in the development cycle.
- Safety considerations take priority - since medical equipment can be physically close to, in contact with, or even inserted into patients. Additionally, many medical devices are used in the patient’s home and operated by untrained users in uncontrolled environments. Designs must therefore meet the strict safety and performance standards set by the relevant regulatory agencies, such as the FDA and IEC.
- Patient safety and equipment reliability - is enhanced by features such as backup power systems, surge protection, and isolation. Reliability will also dictate design aspects such as AC-to-DC and DC-to-DC conversion topologies — multiple stages increase reliability but must be balanced against complexity and cost constraints.
- Speed-to-market demands - compress development cycles and influence the choice between discrete components and modules. MOSFETs and IGBTs are the stalwarts of electrical power engineering but the vast choice of devices can seem bewildering. Factors such as voltage levels, switching speeds, and operating temperatures will determine the behaviour of a given component and simulations may sometimes be necessary to guarantee safe and reliable performance. Special care must be taken when designing gate driver circuits for MOSFETs, and integrated gate-driver solutions are now available. Solutions such as DC-DC converters and AC-DC power supply modules can simplify system design, reduce development time, and improve overall system performance.
- Increasing miniaturisation trends in devices such as wearables and certain surgical instruments - drive a requirement for faster switching speeds and efficiencies. Newer technologies such as Silicon Carbide (SiC) are replacing silicon for applications that need higher switching frequencies and efficiencies to shrink overall form factors.
Featured Healthcare solutions
Technology
Power: designing solutions with power at the core
We provide you with the right insights and expertise when you need it most, so you can make the right decisions for your product, and your business.
Biosensors
STMicroelectronics ST1VAFE3BX
The ST1VAFE3BX is a biosensor embedding a vAFE channel to detect biopotential signals and a high-performance 3-axis digital accelerometer for motion tracking.
Biosensors
STMicroelectronics ST1VAFE6AX
The ST1VAFE6AX is a biosensor embedding a vAFE channel to detect biopotential signals and a 6-axis IMU featuring a high-performance 3-axis digital accelerometer and 3-axis digital gyroscope for motion tracking.
MCU
Renesas RA8E1 MCU
These are general-purpose MCUs and address diverse high-performance and compute-intensive applications in industrial automation, home appliances, smart home, consumer, building/home automation, and medical/healthcare market segments.
MCU
MCX A Series MCUs
The MCX A series devices cover the widest range of applications and are a foundation for intelligent edge applications. They offer an optimized and cost-effective balance of performance and autonomous peripherals.
With so many factors to consider and time-to-market pressure demanding accelerated decision making, how can you make sure that your power solution optimises the performance of your medical application?
Avnet Silica is here to support you
is based on leveraging the capabilities of a strong medical electronics ecosystem. As a partner to the industry’s leading brands and recognised expert in power electronics, Avnet Silica can help you select the best power technologies to support your solution, without exceeding your budget.
Whether the answer is to build or buy, module or discrete design, our experts are here to help your team weigh the options and specify the best power solution for your application. With a comprehensive portfolio of products from the world’s leading suppliers of power electronics, Avnet Silica has the inventory in place to support you, particularly when time to market is critical.
When you work with us, you have direct access to our relationships with these suppliers and the insights that will ensure you make the right decisions. Also, since some medical applications can take years to reach the market, we stock products on seven- to ten-year extended life programs and tailor our supply chains to ensure product availability well beyond end-of-life announcements, supporting your equipment in the field or spare parts programs.
From system design to application engineering, and prototyping, Avnet Silica’s specialist power team provides the products, technical support, regulatory compliance advice, and design services to help you develop and optimise your medical power solutions. It's an exciting time to be involved in the power industry, and Avnet Silica is here to support you every step of the way.
We know what it takes to serve the medical industry and invite you to put us to work for you.
Working on a power project?
Our experts bring insights that extend beyond the datasheet, availability and price. The combined experience contained within our network covers thousands of projects across different customers, markets, regions and technologies. We will pull together the right team from our collective expertise to focus on your application, providing valuable ideas and recommendations to improve your product and accelerate its journey from the initial concept out into the world.
Webinar
The Future of Healthcare
Discover how technology is transforming healthcare in this three-day webinar featuring top semiconductor companies. Sessions will cover advancements in early disease detection, wearable health monitoring, and cutting-edge medical devices.
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