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TechWaTch Jan/Feb 2025
The Importance of 3D Circuits in Healthcare
By Michael Deckert, HARTING AG
tracts and equipment. Everyone benefits from new cutting-edge engineering in medical devices and clinical hardware. In the race to fine-tune healthcare sys- tems and deliver the best patient care, technology plays an enor- mous role.
D HARTING has found that
new types of 3D circuits are inte- gral to some of the advances in healthcare that have been going on over the past few years.
Electrical and Mechanical Essentially, these 3D circuits
combine the electrical and me- chanical functions and compo- nents of systems that can be put into medical devices and other ap- plications. As HARTING pioneers the substrate, the company gets results that empower manufac- turers to pursue design freedom. That means they have more fire- power to engineer efficiencies and change the game on what’s possi- ble within a healthcare setting. When an engineer or techni- cal person looks at HARTING’s
octors and clinicians need the best tools. Hospitals need the best supply con-
products, they find that these new types of circuits contribute to miniaturization — to making certain types of equipment smaller and more agile. This is one of the biggest value proposi- tions for a whole new generation of circuitry components. Compare this to early ver-
sions of cameras and video record- ing equipment. However, the out- come in the medical world comes with much higher stakes. The abil- ity to shrink hardware and equip- ment fundamentally changes what’s necessary for all sorts of in- patient and outpatient daily proce- dures, everything from surgery to vital signs monitoring.
Miniaturization If you wonder what’s at the
heart of the goal to miniaturize medical devices, there are a number of ways to explain this. You could say that it builds more capability into a given applica- tion. You could say that it ushers in efficiencies. But one of the best ways to explain it is that miniaturization drives less inva- sive care. Think about something like a
pacemaker that goes inside the body or something like an endo- scope that’s used internally for procedures. In both of these cases, making the actual technology smaller changes the clinical work- flow in a really positive way. Making a pacemaker small-
er allows for less invasive types of surgeries. Making an endo- scope or similar object smaller may eliminate the need for cer- tain types of expensive processes like anesthesia. This is some of the most ex-
citing innovation in medicine — where you can see how this tech- nology will actually improve peo- ple’s lives. There’s a big value to less recovery after less invasive procedures, and less disruption into a patient’s life. Also, making healthcare less expensive is a broad goal for all stakeholders: government offices, households, and providers, to name a few. One application is innova-
tion in drug delivery systems. That same high design and miniaturization make it easier to treat diabetes patients with in- sulin, or run an IV, or do all sorts of pharmaceutical treatment in
different formats. Another category of com-
mon application is in implants and hearing aids. There are also massive efficiencies in making these items smaller and more capable through electromechani- cal design.
3D-MID 3D-MID stands for 3D
Mechatronic Integrated Device, also known as a 3D circuit. This technology is a manufacturing
Essentially, these 3D circuits combine the
electrical and mechanical
functions and components of systems that can be put into medical devices and other applications.
technology that integrates circuits directly into three-dimensional thermoplastic substrates. For ex- ample, the housing of a hearing aid, which is needed anyway, is used to support the circuitry on its inside, and a separate circuit board can be replaced. This technology enables the
seamless combination of electron- ic and mechanical functions in a single component, which also eliminates the need of additional connecting points for the antenna. By eliminating these require- ments, in-ear devices can be made as small as possible, which not on- ly makes hearing aids nearly in- visible, but also improves per- formance and comfort. This is achieved through customer-de- signed shapes for a perfect fit to the ear, improving sound quality and minimizing power consump- tion by reducing the weight of the entire component. At the end of the day, it’s
about functional improvement. The value of 3D circuits isn’t lim- ited to the healthcare industry. Across many different fields, HARTING is applying some of the same underlying innova- tions, for very different applica- tions, some of them based on cre-
ative, out-of-the-box thinking. Contact: HARTING AG, Leugenestrasse 10, 2500 Biel 6, Switzerland % +41-323442121 E-mail:
mid@harting.com Web:
www.3d-circuits.com r
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