PCBs for Medical Equipment

In many ways, technology has reshaped our world, but the most significant impact has been in the field of medicine. The most important aspect is the diagnosis, and electronic equipment can help in a variety of ways. There are certain steps to be followed t to produce a high-quality Medical product. The first step is the concept and then it progresses to research, circuit designing, PCB designing, prototyping, design review, manufacturing, and lastly Quality Assurance. The most important aspects of it are circuit design, packaging, and prototyping. Medical PCB assembly is the assembly of specially designed printed circuit boards for medical equipment.

Key Consideration of Medical PCBAs:

As medical devices are used in important health-related procedures like operations, so these medical devices need to be accurate, reliable, and sustainable, and this is only possible to design highly accurate and precise PCBA for that medical device. So, regardless of the type of medical device, a PCB must be designed, manufactured, and assembled correctly.

Safety:

It is the first consideration while manufacturing PCBA for medical devices, as those devices are either used on the patient’s body or inside the patient’s body. If there is any short-circuit happens during the operation then this may cost patient death. So, it is important to develop robust devices for medical purposes to ensure patient safety even when the device is used under extreme conditions.

Reliability:

Reliability is another key consideration during the medical PCB assembly process that ensures the high performance of devices, which is also critical to ensure the device is performing as expected and delivering consistent results.

Regulatory Compliance:

Medical PCBs, unlike other PCBs, must meet strict standards to ensure their reliability and durability. As a result, it is important to understand and comply with all predefined standards and regulations in order to generate complete information regarding development procedures PCBA for that specific medical device whenever needed.

Improve Turnaround Time:

It is critical for medical device companies to develop new medical devices and bring them to market in a timely manner. While PCB manufacturers determine the development timeline, experienced manufacturers know how to accelerate progress while maintaining the same level of efficiency or even improving it up to some extent. This means selecting experienced PCBA manufacturers with t the b best turnaround time and h high-efficiency records must be selected in order to have a quick and highly efficient medical device in the end.

Cleanliness:

During fabrication and soldering of medical PCBs, acids, inorganic salts, and other residues may sometimes be left on the PCB assemblies, which can lead to the corrosion of PCB components, causing electrical equipment to degrade and eventually leading to the failure of the device. To resolve this issue, it is important to clean the PCBA to ensure high standards and improve the reliability of the medical device.

Testing Standards to be followed for Medical PCBs.

It is good practice to do regular testing during the manufacturing of PCBA especially to ensure the reliability of medical devices.

Automated Optical Inspection (AOI): AOI uses a single 2D camera or two 3D cameras to capture images of the PCB. The captured image is checked against the schematic. If the board does not match the schematic, it is sent to be manually inspected.
Solderability Test: This test ensures whether the terminals and leads are soldered perfectly or whether there are some defects while soldering.
Ionic Contamination Testing: This testing is used to detect ionic residues that form during the fabrication of PCBs for medical devices and component soldering processes.
Peel Test: This test is used to determine how much force is required to peel the laminate from PCB.
Flying Probe Test: In this test, a probe moves to different testing points to test electronicsrelated problems like a short circuit.

Applications of Medical PCBA:

Implantable Devices:

One of the most important components of implantable medical devices is medical PCB. Because of the precision of such medical devices, the manufacture and assembly of such PCBs must adhere to strict standards.

Cochlear Implant: These types of devices are used to help deaf people in hearing.
Implantable defibrillators: These medical devices help those peoples who have high heart disease risks from unexpected trauma.
Responsive Neurostimulator (RNS): It is a device that is implanted in the brain and is used by people who have epilepsy. People with epilepsy, do not respond well to seizures. These kinds of implanted medical devices continuously monitor brain activity and give electric shock whenever it detects abnormal brain activity.

Medical Imaging and Diagnostic Devices:

These types of medical devices are critical in the healthcare industry because they provide useful information to doctors and health-related professionals to diagnose and treat the medical case in a better and most efficient way. PCBs are found in a variety of medical imaging and diagnostic equipment, such as Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRIs), ultrasound equipment, X-ray machines, and CT scans.

Monitoring Devices:

Devices like blood pressure monitors, temperature monitors, blood glucose monitors, and respiration monitors are some examples of medical monitoring devices, and all these medical monitoring devices have one core component and that is PCBAs.

Conclusion:

The main purpose to develop electronic medical device is to meet the needs of the medical industry. It is part of our common need, whether it is related to diagnosis or a laboratory equipment. Some of these medical devices are becoming life-saving support to millions of patients across the globe like pace-maker. Dialysis machines are another example of life-sustaining equipment, many patients rely on them to survive. In nutshell, medical device manufacturing accounts for a sizable portion of the electronics and PCB assembly industries.