We create systems and interfaces for just about anything

 

 

BCA’s permanent staff of 25 engineers have been designing complicated electronics and software-based devices for over 27 years. Our breadth of knowledge across both disciplines allow us to ensure that the integration of electronics and software is seamless.

From challenging analog electronic designs to cloud-based data access and reporting, BCA’s team will provide outstanding solutions appropriate for your application.

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Medical Design

Medical design is one of our specialties at BCA. We are fluent in the application of the Medical Risk Management process, and will work with you to develop your product documentation. Devices designed using our development process have been approved in Europe and the United States. When applicable, we can also conform to our customers’ development process, without difficulty. Our ability to provide outstanding medical device design is a result of both our high standards for design, and our extensive experience in the medical field.

 

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Research

All product development begins with the creation of a requirements document based on user needs. In some cases, these requirements cannot be properly defined without conducting research to determine if a particular development approach will be fruitful. This research may take the form of evaluating a new technology, or verifying existing research from a peer-reviewed journal.

We adhere to a scientific approach which allows us to better define areas of research and carry the work to a conclusion. This is a valuable starting place for many projects, which utilize research to reduce uncertainty and evaluate risk in a product concept.

 

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Product Development

As your product design team, BCA provides outstanding technical expertise. Our engineers are specialists in software, analog and digital electronics, and user interface design. To fully develop a product, we have great working relationships with industrial and mechanical design firms, as well as contract manufacturing groups to ensure success for our clients.

When we design your product, we also offer the following related services:

 

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Electronics Design

Our scientific approach and experience developing a variety of products, both large and small, make us the perfect choice for completing your custom electronics efficiently and effectively. All of our electronics are subjected to a personalized test plan, as reliable products avoid costly field service issues. Our testing process ensures that final operation of your electronics meets or exceeds the product requirements.

To ensure manufacturability and avoid undue radiated emissions and crosstalk, constraints on electronic designs are ever-increasing as the performance of electronic circuits accelerates. To yield better circuit board layouts, our experience has led us to conclude that a design engineer is best suited for the task. Unless requested otherwise, all our layouts are completed at BCA by a design engineer.

We maintain a significant amount of calibrated test equipment in-house, including:

 

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Software & Firmware

 

BCA has always been dedicated to providing top-quality software and firmware, exceeding our client’s needs. In conjunction, our historical experience with standalone systems has allowed us to create more connected Internet of Things (IoT) and Cloud-based systems as the industry has evolved.

Businesses today often need complete and complex systems to acquire analog data, process signals, control data via a user interface, and interact with the cloud for reporting, turning data into actionable knowledge. Whether your product requires all of these elements or just one, you will find BCA to be an outstanding software and firmware development partner.

Embedded Firmware/Software

Code necessary for embedded systems is differentiated from application software by a number of different constraints. It requires knowledge of how to write drivers that control the electronics, how to program in a real-time environment, and often needs to be concerned with how to operate using the least amount of power.

From BCA’s beginning, our core business has been the design of embedded systems. We offer the advantage of smooth integration of both software and firmware platforms into your product, by having both firmware and electronics engineers housed under one roof. We develop diagnostics and embedded software in parallel, which allows for faster debugging, quick detection of electronics or user error, effective reporting, and shared code; which ultimately reduces field service costs.

Computer Simulation

Depending on our customer’s needs, we sometimes recommend a computer simulation to speed-up the delivery of embedded system code. This allows for earlier and easier development, considering computer tools are more powerful, even before the custom electronics are completed. Usability testing and interface design can be performed in parallel with development to reduce time and provide the customer with a marketing tool in advance of the products completion.

Software Apps, Web, & Mobile

Software development technology has progressed to a point where a multi-platform environment has become the industry standard, allowing for a single application to be developed, which will run effortlessly on the different operating systems found on computers and mobile devices. BCA is also versed in providing native platform development for sole application use on a singular platform. In addition, we have successfully integrated our applications into a number of cloud services, which allow for worldwide data access and voice recognition tools.

 

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User Interface & Web Design

 

By modern standards, it is a necessity to utilize an intuitive and beautiful user interface. BCA takes a user-centric approach to design and creates unique, easy-to-use interfaces to suit any product and platform. During our design process, we combine our creative talents and technical expertise with client feedback, to achieve the ideal solution. By applying both a solid back-end architecture and beautiful front-end graphical interface design, BCA will bring ease-of-use and a pleasant experience to all users.

Design Services

 

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Test Fixtures

 

BCA is uniquely qualified to design custom electronic test solutions for production manufacturing environments. Using our expertise in circuit design and embedded software development, we create test fixtures which maximize testing coverage, while minimizing equipment cost and manufacturing line footprint. With our in-house 3-axis CNC machine we are able to provide fast, high-quality test fixture enclosure modifications to suit the customer’s needs.

Completely documented, these fixtures can be replicated quickly to add capacity for increasing production volume, and are easily serviced providing a long operational lifetime. The electronics used in our test fixtures is a combination of off-the-shelf measurement modules, and custom electronics that accommodate the specific form factor of your printed circuit assemblies. Our method minimizes custom wiring and connectors which reduces cost and increases reliability.

The accompanying user interface is either built using LabVIEW, C#, or TestStand, based on the customer’s requirements. All of our interfaces are required to be simple, intuitive, and input-minimalist to be the most efficient for production line environments. Additionally, we allow operator flexibility to select and run specific tests, sets of tests, test loops, and other debugging operations while repairing failed boards.

 

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Compliance

A major role in any product’s development, is complying with various industry-specific regulatory standards. Our collective knowledge gained from years of conforming to rigorous medical industry regulations, ensures our testing procedures will exceed your needs. We work conjointly with our client’s regulatory consultant to determine exact standards, and develop the appropriate test procedures for compliance. We provide this test procedure to the proper testing facility, or in some cases, perform preliminary testing in-house.

• ISO 14971 for Medical Devices
• IEC 60601-1 for Medical Devices
• IEC 61010-1 for Measurement, Control, and Laboratory Devices
• IEC 62368-1 for Audio/Video, Information, and Communication Devices