Case Study – Medical Patient-attached Subassembly

Module redesign for equivalent subassemblies in complex systems

Millogic’s engineering team of analog and digital engineers, PCB designers, and software engineers are capable of handling board-level redesign to provide a new-technology board designed to be fully system compatible with an original board with obsolescence problems.

Case Study

Millogic was approached by a client with a problem.  They had a medical device with FDA approval, but a subassembly would shortly be no longer manufacturable because of obsolete components.  The device was a patient attached unit, with very specific analog signal processing behavior.  The device was linked to the host with a custom USB interface, and was controlled by a DSP.

Millogic analyzed the BOM, identified parts that should be designed out in addition to the ones the client knew had availability issues.  The DSP was replaced with a newer version DSP from the same family, and Millogic handled the software migration.  Common logic was collapsed into an FPGA, reducing parts count.  A newer USB solution was incorporated into the board, and the high power static RAMs were replaced with lower power SDRAM’s through the FPGA and FPGA internal RAMs.

The result was a field-swappable unit, with lower manufacturing cost, higher reliability, lower power, and full system compatibility.