Medical equipment and devices must be designed with rigorous standards to function in environments where patient safety and product reliability are critical. Today, there is great demand for innovative, feature-rich, and affordable electronic equipment to be used in diagnostic labs, hospitals, and clinics, as well as for consumer self-care. Engineers are constantly challenged to deploy differentiating leading-edge electronics that demonstrably improve patient care in a cost-effective manner for in-home patient care and portable monitoring and therapeutic devices. Mechanical membrane switches and increasingly feature-rich capacitive user interfaces are used in a wide range of medical equipment and devices — defibrillators, EKG leads, electronic sensors, glucose meters, infusion pumps, patient monitors, and portable oxygen units, as well as disposable dental, medical, and surgical equipment. Therefore, it is important to closely compare and understand the respective technologies be...