Designing High Reliability into Life-Saving Cardiac Care Instruments

One type of electronic device where high reliability is the most important design objective is medical instrumentation. Instruments such as defibrillators, which provide life-saving electrical stimulation of the heart, and portable ultrasound machines that can provide critical diagnoses such as mitral valve defects, are mission critical and must have a robust design to ensure that they maintain the necessary uptime for patient care. The markets for these instruments are both large, approximately $10 million for defibrillators and $7 million for ultrasound instruments and growing at a minimum of a compound annual growth rate of over five percent.1, 2