Managing High Heat: Current Trends in the Medical Market

Engineers are challenged to create and re-design existing technologies across many markets. Design engineers never hear “make the new version bigger and slower,” rather they are tasked with making the technology smaller, more efficient and more reliable.  This often leads to increasing amounts of waste heat created by the electronics in pursuit of increased performance. The need to remove excessive heat is always important, but in the medical industry, this excess heat can affect a patient’s experience; longer procedure times, hotter touch temperature devices, etc. In a desire to increase the patient’s experience, medical systems professionals desire instrumentation and diagnostic equipment that is more reliable and takes up less space.

At ACT, we understand our medical customers’ need to satisfy all end users, including the purchasers at various medical facilities, the needs of the medical professional using the equipment and the patients experiencing the equipment in use. Partnering with top medical companies and gaining insight from top engineers in the medical industry has allowed us to collaboratively design a variety of thermal technologies that have been proven in-field. In order to achieve precision and accuracy within the sensors and controls of tomography devices, many designers are finding that advanced thermal systems are needed to provide even temperature distribution near sensors, or to cool extremely hot electronics, preventing overheating. The challenges of extremely tight packaging requirements, while meeting high-performance standards are challenges that are ever-present at the interface of thermal engineering and manufacturing design. These are challenges that thermal engineers love to tackle.

In addition to challenging functionality requirements, many of these technologies have a long adoption cycle, multiple qualification trials, and size hurdles, all of which often warrant custom engineering throughout the design cycle. ACT has found that open communication with our clients is one of the most important first steps in kicking off a design partnership, and that communication over the course of several years is critical for success. Our desire is that every client knows they are valued and can count on our staff to be an extension of their team. We hope that as you approach your next redesign, you consider implementing a thermal management approach at an early stage, and find the right partner that allows you to create a better product with no overheating issues!

Here are two examples of our partnership work in action: Case Study on Lab measurement system & Long Term Agreement with INHECO