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Views: 158 Author: Site Editor Publish Time: 2022-05-04 Origin: Site
From ambulance to operating room, recovery room to discharge at home, patients today encounter any number of medical devices that must be lightweight, small, safe, and often, portable. To maintain these safe, hygienic designs, most medical device manufacturers rely on pneumatics because they are highly customizable and compact.
As the demands for these types of components have evolved, so have the pneumatic cylinders and valves used in them. The need for smaller, lighter devices has translated into a push for valves that offer more flow at lower power (often battery power).
Adaptation is critical
Pneumatics is used heavily in oxygen concentrators, infusion pumps, ventilators, wound therapy, blood analyzers, pressure cuff devices, medical bed surfaces, breathable gas delivery systems and anesthesia devices because they all use some type of gas to control their functions.
But because pneumatic components were initially designed for industrial use, manufacturers have had to adapt their use to medical designs. The challenge is making an industrial-grade product work in a medical device because their needs are different than industrial applications.
This prototype is for a specialized ‘patient delivery’ valve assembly on an oxygen concentrator that can be adapted to a high-volume (polymer) manifold, or custom manifold versions. The design is from AVENTICS, the new company spun off from Bosch Rexroth’s pneumatics division.
However, this forced adaptation has allowed for some unique innovations because there aren’t a great deal of regulations or standards that restrict design, Gant added. Although RoHS, REACH and ISO standards are critical to design, there is no one rule to follow. If you come up with a pretty good idea, there’s not a lot of history or regulations that tie you from using that product.
In the majority of cases, the relationship between pneumatics companies and medical device manufacturers becomes an engineering partnership.
