Under certain circumstances, electrostatic discharge (ESD) can cause problems with medical devices. Typical handling of a medical device can generate ESD voltages of 25 kilovolts or more. While each discharge can be extremely short in duration, such high voltages can cause disruptions to electronic devices such as loss of memory, device reset, or even physical damage that results in fusing or rupture of device components. For example, a sufficiently strong ESD event can cause a display on a medical device to freeze, which gives the appearance that the device has locked up. The display on a medical device can be particularly vulnerable because it is an electronic component that is often close to the source of the injected ESD. Accordingly, applicants believe that there is a need to better mitigate the risk of ESD events at a display of a medical device or at other sensitive electronic components.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds