Powering What Matters: AE Addresses Four Key Medical Trends at MD&M West 2024

The Medical Device & Manufacturing West (MD&M West) tradeshow was held February 6-8 in Anaheim, CA with over 1,600 exhibitors and more than 14,000 attendees from the medical industry. Top medical device and equipment makers, power supply providers, thought leaders and engineers attend. Once again, Advanced Energy (AE) played a significant role as a featured exhibitor.

Four key trends at MD&M West 2024

The AE team engaged with industry leaders on the latest trends driving the medical industry– trends that inform and define medical product innovations powering customer needs. These trends include:

• Significant growth for electrosurgery

The electrosurgery market has grown steadily, driven by technology upgrades, increasing demand for minimally invasive procedures, and improved patient outcomes.

• Growing investments in cardiac ablation

The global cardiac ablation market is projected to grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of over 13% from 2023 to 2035. The major driver is the increase in an aging population. According to the WHO, one in six individuals on the planet is expected to be 60 years of age or older by 2030.

• Miniaturization

Technological advancements are shrinking medical devices making them less invasive, more efficient and increasingly personalized. 

• Growth in Aesthetic Lasers

The non-ablative lasers segment is projected to expand at a CAGR of 7.8% through 2033. Non-ablative lasers are less invasive than ablative lasers because they target the dermis beneath the skin without removing the top layer. Innovative treatments and new technologies are revolutionizing the world of cosmetic and dermatological care. Today’s med spas and skin clinics offer an array of combination treatments that deliver remarkable results without the need for invasive surgery.

Advanced Energy technologies address key trends

AE highlighted new technologies at MD&M that enable medical designers to deliver more advanced technologies with more features and improved performance to address medical market needs. Among these were the FlexiCharge AC-DC Power Supply that extends a modular concept to encompass HV capacitor charging and the AEQ series of micro-size HV power converters.


 
FlexiCharge - The world’s first capacitor charger and power supply system

FlexiCharge has a 1 kV capacitor charging output and incorporates five CoolX module slots (800 W total), powered from a single AC input. System designers can meet all their power needs from a single unit, minimizing leakage currents and simplifying system-level EMC design.


AEQ Series - Micro-size HV power converters

Products in the AEQ series represent the smallest isolated DC-DC HV power converters, providing a bias voltage up to 5 kV at 1.25 W. The units feature isolation of 1,500 VDC and a control pin for output voltage adjustment. A wide variety of applications benefit from this technology including mass spectrometry, gas chromatography, photomultiplier tubes (PMT), CT imaging, PET/SPECT and ultrasound as well as flat panel displays and portable detectors.

To meet the demands of the growth in cardiac ablation, AE displayed the NCF series of AC-DC CF rated front end power supplies that are designed to address critical medical applications that are moving CF ratings/isolation to the AC-DC front end. This market is increasingly served by custom designs versus limited and costly off-the-shelf products. Advanced Energy’s SL Power product line is expanding with the introduction of a standard line of AC-DC CF-rated open frame products from 150 W to 800 W across five families – ideal for use in pulsed electric field applications


 
Typical pulsed electric field system architecture


To meet the demands of growth in electrosurgery, AE introduced the next generation of precision power for the medical industry, AE’s RF and Pulsed Electric Field Generators, also shown at MD&M 2024. The AE Bipolar Sine and Square Wave RF Generator provides a wide power (up to 400 W) and frequency (up to 1 Mhz) range and square/sine wave options. The AE Pulse Electric Field Generator provides a wide voltage range, fast switching and highly configurable pulse trains up to 3000 V.  

Modularity and configurability enable use in and a rapid time to market for a wide range of medical applications. Safety-focused design focuses the wellbeing of the operator and patient as the highest priority.

The next generation power platforms are an extension of AE’s capabilities in precision power, and the fully user-configurable power platform provides faster time to market at lowest total cost of ownership.   

   
Pulsed Electric Field Generator

As well as advanced power solutions, visitors to the Advanced Energy booth saw monitoring and measurement technologies that are optimized for new and emerging medical applications. Among the latest products, for example, were fiber optic temperature and pressure sensors that combine simplicity with safety by eliminating galvanic / electrical patient contact while remaining minimally invasive. Additionally, the sensors are immune to EMI / RF interference, short circuits, electrical voltage levels and environmental effects such as corrosion, ensuring flexible implementation and long-term operation. This, plus their small size, allows the sensors to be fitted into catheters, forceps and other tiny devices.

Leadership in Medical

Advanced Energy offers the broadest portfolio of medically certified precision power supplies and, with over 40 years of leadership in power conversion, measurement and control solutions, continues to enable its customers’ medical innovations with standard, custom and configurable products. Designed to meet current and future international safety certifications, AE’s high-efficiency, high-performance power supplies deliver unrivalled reliability for medical applications.

MD&M West allowed medical professionals to see these technologies close-up and to discuss their evolving requirements – requirements that we will feed into future designs to ensure AE continues to develop the cutting-edge technologies demanded in this mission critical industry.