Advanced Energy's Medical Power Design Innovation: Past & Future

Blog Summary

•    Innovative Power Solutions: Advanced Energy (AE) specializes in transforming power usage, delivery, and management with a diverse portfolio of proprietary products and global technical talent.

•    Medical Product Group: In May 2022, AE established a dedicated medical product group to support various medical applications, including electrosurgery, imaging, and surgical robotics, with dedicated Customer Experience Centers (CECs).

•    Extensive Medical Experience: AE has over 30 years of medical experience, enhanced by strategic acquisitions, providing a broad range of products and technologies for demanding medical and life science applications.

•    Future Innovations: AE is investing in new product development, such as the NCF family of CF-rated medical power supplies, which offer high isolation and efficiency for critical medical applications.

Advanced Energy’s Evolution in Medical Power Design

Advanced Energy (AE) shapes and transforms how power is used, delivered and managed. With a history of innovation and technology, a diverse portfolio of proprietary products and global technical talent, AE helps solve customers' power delivery problems.

Founded in Colorado in 1981, Advanced Energy has grown into a global technology company that develops precision power conversion, measurement and control technologies across the globe.  

In May 2022, Advanced Energy established a dedicated medical product group to better support electrosurgery, imaging, life science, patient monitoring, surgical robotics and general medical customers. This includes dedicated Customer Experience Centers (CECs) that support customer design and testing needs. CEC engineers assist customers in identifying power-related problems, sampling prototypes, and conducting pre-compliance testing for complete systems.

While the medical product group provides additional focus, Advanced Energy has a long history of supporting medical customers and established its medical portfolio through synergistic acquisitions over the previous decade.
Figure 1: AE acquisitions over the years.

Advanced Energy’s acquisitions build on over 30 years of medical experience, providing the broadest range of products, technologies and capabilities to serve the most demanding medical and life science applications.

Next Steps in Medical Power Design

Looking to the future, Advanced Energy is increasing investment and accelerating new product development with a compelling roadmap of medical grade power supplies.  

AE continues to advance its innovations, for example, with Cardiac Floating (CF) AC-DC power supplies, especially through the new NCF product line. Electrosurgery applications are increasingly moving CF ratings and isolation to the AC-DC front end power supply. These applications have relied upon custom power supply designs or limited and expensive off-the-shelf products. 

Figure 2: AE’s newly released 660 watt CF-rated medical power supply, NCF660

Advanced Energy’s standard NCF family of CF rated products are targeted for critical medical applications that need CF rated leakage current and high levels of isolation. The NCF family is available with output voltages from 12 V to 48 V and most models include an optional 5 V standby and 12 V fan output. Each model accepts a universal input of 85 to 264 VAC full-load efficiency of greater than 90 percent. These compact switch-mode power supplies feature output overvoltage, overcurrent, overtemperature and short-circuit protection. Advanced Energy’s NCF product line provides the following advantages:

• Simplify layout
• Simplify thermal and EMI design
• Potential to reduce size and weight
• Simplify equipment Bill of Materials (BOM) 
• Accelerate time to market
• Lowest total cost of ownership.

Why Choose Advanced Energy’s Medical Power Products?

Advanced Energy offers a broad portfolio of medical power supplies from its SL Power, Artesyn®, Excelsys and UltraVolt® product lines. AE’s power solutions are designed for optimum performance and reliability and to meet the latest regulatory and safety standards such as IEC60601-1 3rd Edition, IEC60601-1-2 4th Edition EMC, 2xMOPP, and low leakage current. 

These product series include open frame, enclosed, fanless and configurable models as well as external medical AC adapters and DC-DC modules. An AC-DC medical power supply unit (PSU) or medical DC-DC module comes with the backing of one of the largest medical grade power supply manufacturers in the world.

Selecting power supplies that meet medical requirements and that are pre-approved to the EN60601-1 safety standard, helps medical device and system manufacturers speed compliance testing of products. Medical device companies can also use medically approved power supplies to minimize the risk of encountering unexpected development problems.

Advanced Energy also has extensive experience in providing RF and Pulsed Field Ablation (PFA) solutions for medical applications. Its extensive medical portfolio includes a variety of standard products and custom solutions, leveraging AE’s deep engineering expertise to meet specific technical requirements. This combination of a broad product range and engineering experience positions AE well to support the development of next-generation electrosurgery devices. 

Figure 3: Examples of power products for electrosurgery applications.

With deep application know-how and responsive service and support across the globe, AE builds collaborative partnerships to meet rapid medical developments, propel growth for its customers and power the future of medicine.

SUMMARY

Advanced Energy shapes and transforms how power is used, delivered and managed, offering a broad portfolio of medical power supplies. AE’s extensive engineering experience provides multiple options for the next generation electrosurgery devices, from standard products to full custom solutions. Medical device companies can leverage AE medically approved power supplies to minimize risk and speed time to market. For more information about Advanced Energy’s expertise in medical applications, visit: Medical Power Supplies | Advanced Energy.