MASS PRODUCTION OF INDIVIDUALIZED MEDICAL DEVICES

• Main Authors: BROWN JEFFREY D, PENDLETON JOHN E, ACKER DEAN M, EARL BRIAN D, SANFORD ADAM H
• Format: Patent
• Language: English
• Published: 13.11.2014
• Subjects: COMBINED OPERATIONS; HEALTHCARE INFORMATICS, i.e. INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATIONTECHNOLOGY [ICT] SPECIALLY ADAPTED FOR THE HANDLING ORPROCESSING OF MEDICAL OR HEALTHCARE DATA; INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY [ICT] SPECIALLY ADAPTEDFOR SPECIFIC APPLICATION FIELDS; MACHINE TOOLS; METAL-WORKING NOT OTHERWISE PROVIDED FOR; OTHER WORKING OF METAL; PERFORMING OPERATIONS; PHYSICS; TRANSPORTING; UNIVERSAL MACHINE TOOLS

A plurality of individual medical devices is created that define a medical device family. Within the family of medical devices, each of the plurality of medical devices has at least one dimension that, within an acceptable tolerance, is substantially equal to the same dimension of another of the plurality of medical devices. Thus, for each medical device in the family, another, corresponding medical device has at least one substantially similar dimension. For example, a first medical device may have a first value for a dimension and a second medical device may have a second value for the same dimension that is equal to one of the sum of the second dimension and the acceptable tolerance or the difference between the second dimension and the acceptable tolerance. Thus, each of the plurality of medical devices varies from another of the plurality of medical devices by the acceptable tolerance.