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US 2011/0034910 A1Published application
System and method for preventing reprocessing of a powered surgical instrument
AssigneeTyco Healthcare Group LP
InventorsAdam Ross, Michael Zemlok
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A surgical instrument is disclosed. The instrument includes a microcontroller coupled to a memory, the microcontroller is configured to control the surgical instrument and a usage counter stored in the memory that is incremented when the surgical instrument is activated, wherein the microcontroller is further configured to prevent actuation of the surgical instrument when the usage counter is above a predetermined threshold.
Claims18
A surgical instrument, comprising:
- a microcontroller coupled to a memory, the microcontroller is configured to control the surgical instrument;
- and
- a usage counter stored in the memory that is incremented when the surgical instrument is activated, wherein the microcontroller is further configured to prevent actuation of the surgical instrument when the usage counter is above a predetermined threshold.
A surgical instrument, comprising:
- a microcontroller coupled to a memory, the microcontroller is configured to control the surgical instrument;
- a sterilization counter stored in the memory that is incremented when the surgical instrument is sterilized, wherein the microcontroller is further configured to prevent actuation of the surgical instrument when the sterilization counter is above a predetermined threshold.
A surgical instrument, comprising:
- at least one component including a component microcontroller is configured to store an identifier corresponding to the at least one component;
- a microcontroller coupled to a memory, the microcontroller is configured to control the surgical instrument and to authenticate the at least one component based on a response to a challenge request, wherein the response includes the identifier.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.