WaveZero Form/Met Shielding Protects Against
RFID Emissions in Medical Electronics

July 9, 2008, Sunnyvale, CA — In response to a recent Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) study involving the effects of RFID emissions on medical electronics, WaveZero announced today that its innovative Form/Met Shielding can be used to protect against these RFID emissions.

The advantages that Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) can provide to the medical industry are many, potentially improving patient safety and providing better tracking and tracing of medical equipment and pharmaceuticals.

However, a new Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) study that suggests RFID systems can cause 'potentially hazardous incidents in medical devices.' Among other things, electrical interference changed breathing machines' ventilation rates and caused syringe pumps to stop. Some hospitals have already begun using RFID tags to track a wide variety of medical devices, but the new finding suggests the systems may have unintended consequences.

Luckily, many of these problems can be avoided by using enclosure-level or board-level shielding from WaveZero. All shielding requires a connection to a ground plane, which then produces what is called a Faraday Cage. The waves of energy hit the metal surface and the energy is either reflected or distributed to ground, effectively preventing the unintended electro magnetic transmission from affecting the normal operation of a device. Typically, as long as the shield material is adequate, and there are no apertures larger than ¼ of the wavelength of the stray signal, the shield will be effective.

WaveZero Form/Met shielding is ideal for medical applications, being highly flexible and lightweight. A leading manufacturer of heart defibrillators, for example, found Form/Met to be ideal for providing the 360-degree shielding required.

WaveZero Form/Met EMI/RFI shielding is created by thermoforming and die cutting a lightweight plastic substrate and then metalizing the substrate with a pure metal or combinations of metal layers to make the shield conductive, which provides a low-cost, lightweight, and resilient shield.

About WaveZero, Inc.
WaveZero, Inc. specializes in custom EMC shielding solutions for medical and similar devices. Its line of patented Form/Met products and DeepCoat vacuum metallization service are designed and optimized specifically to meet the needs of medical device manufacturing. WaveZero is a US operating subsidiary of Block Shield Corporation, a publicly traded company on the London Stock Exchange AIM. For more information, visit http://www.wavezero.com or call 408 830-5100.

Contact:
Catherine van Zuylen
(408) 702-1800
moreinfo@wavezero.com

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