Medical electronics webinar Dec 7

EDN editorial director Patrick Mannion has tipped me off to a medical electronics webinar. He notes: “Seems like something worth looking into. It’s titled “The Medical Electronics Balancing Act: How to lower cost while boosting innovation” and it’s on December 7, 2011 at 1 pm EDT.”

This is a sponsored webinar, with contributors from Freescale and PTC, the people that make software to do product lifecycle management, a critical facet of medical design. My buddy at Intuitive Surgical will be interested in this. Patrick goes on to list the subjects, via a quote from panel moderator Bruce Rayner:

“We’ll discuss market and design trends and drill down on the factors that will help you accelerate the design process and ensure regulatory compliance across a range of devices from portable wireless consumer products to clinical equipment.
One area of focus will be wireless. As medical devices go mobile, we’ll look at the spectrum of technology options available to engineers, from RFID to Zigbee to Bluetooth to 802.11 to WBU, and discuss where and why each has its place in the medical device market. We’ll also review a case study.

Another key area is the growing importance of software in medical devices and applications. Indeed, software is becoming the critical market differentiator for many medical devices. We’ll explore the strategies for effective software/hardware co-development and processes to ensure compliance to demanding governmental standards including FDA 510K.

Here are some of the topics we’ll discuss in the webinar: