Equipment used in hospitals and at emergency sites must be extremely reliable and as close to sterile as possible. A patient’s life may depend on it.
Until recently, that meant the cables and connectors had to fall into one of two categories – disposable or reusable.
Initially, it may appear that single-use, disposable assemblies offer the better solution because they pose no contamination risk and have lower up-front costs.
In order to be reusable, they have to be sterilizable and autoclavable between uses, and capable of many thousands of mating cycles – substantially more expensive.
Whilst there are some applications in which single-use can be appropriate, some disposable connectors can be low quality, unreliable and environmentally unfriendly. ODU has a newly published downloadable technical White Paper on this question.
Fortunately, ODU has other options:
ODU MEDI-SNAP®
High-quality connectors with up to 5,000 mating cycles that can be sterilized up to 200 times. Combining the best attributes of lower initial cost, but designed with the option for single-use, or sterilized for repeated usage, all within reasonable price points.
ODU MINI-MED®
A complete family of pre-terminated cable assemblies, designed to reduce overall costs, but nonetheless rated at more than 1,000 mating cycles.
Considered as either disposable or reusable and in the latter case, sterilizeable between uses, using the Ethylene Oxide (ETO) gas sterilization method.
Further information via the Product Comparison web-page.