The development of defibrillators – a Corscience success story
A brief look back on Corscience’s history and its development projects in the defibrillation sector.
The development of defibrillators at Corscience can be traced back to preliminary work conducted by students at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering of the KIT Karlsruhe Institute of Technology under the supervision of Prof. Armin Bolz. Here, between 1995 and 2001, the very first steps were taken and, following the foundation of the company by Prof. Bolz and the Hamburg-based company WEINMANN EMT GmbH & Co. KG, these were transformed into a professional product development set-up.
The founding project to be undertaken by Corscience was the development of an automated external defibrillator (AED) with current-regulated pulse delivery for Weinmann. Here the current control used adapts the energy output specifically to the patient’s impedance. As such, the right amount of energy is applied to all persons in need of resuscitation and, at the same time, the risk of injury to the cardiac muscle is minimised. With the conclusion of this first AED development back in 2005, Corscience laid the cornerstone to become a technology provider for defibrillation and safety-critical systems in the field of medical technology.
Corscience expanded its technology spectrum in 2007 with the BDM65 defibrillator assembly which combined central components such as VF/VT analysis and shock delivery in an OEM component. With this, Corscience allowed its business partners to develop a defibrillator without the need for expert knowledge of this core technology on their part.
The first professional defibrillator was developed between 2010 and 2013. In addition to an AED function, this device for clinical use by medical experts featured adjustable shock energies, a pacer, blood pressure measurement, a 12-channel ECG and a wide range of monitoring functions. A processor module with embedded Linux operating system which, back then, was becoming established for use in safety-critical systems was used as the basis for the display unit.
Recent Corscience developments in the field of defibrillation feature, in addition to a central defibrillator function, a range of interfaces for local and remote communication, in particular, Bluetooth®, WLAN, USB, Ethernet, UMTS and LTE. These interfaces enable the mobile transfer of data for rescue services as well as monitoring both at home and in clinics.
Over the past 19 years, Corscience has completed numerous developments in the area of electrostimulation. These include four AEDs for the low-end and high-end sector, three defibrillators for professional use in clinics and by rescue services as well as two OEM assemblies with ECG analysis algorithms. The knowledge and experience acquired over this period is applied by our engineers not only for the development of defibrillators, but also the development of life-saving and life-support systems. As a One-stop company, Corscience offers extensive production services, including for electrostimulation.