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10 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I NOVEMBER 2018 Feature Interview by Andy Shaughnessy I-CONNECT007 Medical electronics is an exciting field to be working in right now, with new ideas coming online almost daily. We last interviewed medi- cal PCB designer Kenneth MacCallum in 2015. Recently, I asked him to give us an update on trends he's seeing in medical electronics, and some of the challenges in adapting the latest technology to this segment of the industry. Andy Shaughnessy: Give us a brief background on StarFish Medical, and your work there. We don't see many physicists who are also PCB designers. Kenneth MacCallum: StarFish is a medical device design, development and contract man- ufacturing company. We help medtech inno- vators throughout North America overcome challenging technology obstacles to create breakthrough products that improve health and save lives. We're different from our com- petitors because we focus on enabling medical device start-up companies to dial in their value proposition. I am an engineering physicist, which means I have a strong mathematics and physics back- ground and apply it through engineering. My deepest skillset is electronic design, with a sys- tem level, first principles approach. I believe that to design the best PCBs for a problem, the overall solution will be a balancing act across all disciplines. A tricky set of requirements is rarely optimally addressed without give and take from everyone involved: industrial design- ers, human factors specialists, mechanical engineers, software developers, optical design- ers, regulatory specialists and project manag- ers. This is particularly true when the primary function of a device is fundamentally reliant on some other discipline, like microfluidics or optics. In those cases the electronics is really a support role. Shaughnessy: A lot has happened with medical tech since our last interview almost three years ago. Can you give us an update on some of the trends you're seeing in medical electronics?

• DESIGN007 Magazine - November 2018
• Featured Content — Designing for the Future of Medicine
• Additional Content
• Column — Medical Electronics: Vital Signs Are Good
• Short — Electronic Tattoos Add Power to Wearable Computing
• Feature Interview — In Medical PCB Design, Innovation Never Stops
• Short — Electronic Skin Points the Way North
• Feature Interview — Dock Brown on Succeeding at Failure Analysis
• Short — New Designer: The Best Advice I Have Been Given
• Feature Column — PCB Designers: What You Do Matters
• Feature Interview — New Grad Designs PCBs for Smart Baby Beds
• Feature Interview — Internet of Body: The Next Big Thing for Medical
• PCB007 Highlights
• Column — Chapter Roundup and CID+ Certification
• Column — 10 Fundamental Rules of High-speed PCB Design, Part 3
• Column — Embedding Components, Part 5: Alternative Termination Methodologies and Surface Plating Variations
• Column — Internal Trace Temperatures: More Complicated Than You Think
• MilAero007 Highlights
• Column — Measurement-to-simulation Correlation on Thin Laminate Test Boards
• Short — How Can We Design Electronic Devices That Don't Overheat?
• Column — Six Tips to Ensure Parts Fit on Your Board
• Column — Top Tips for Successful Potting
• Article — Effects of PCB Fiber Weave on High-Speed Signal Integrity
• Short — New Insulating State Found in Stretched Graphene
• Top 10 Editor Picks from PCBDesign007
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