Surgical energy connects a power converter directly to the patient with hundreds to thousands of volts that change tissue. It only works when device engineering, clinical effect, and modeling move together. That’s the half most teams underestimate, and the half we own. We engineer the whole surgical energy system into a safe, controllable, manufacturable medical device. Generator, instrument, and control are designed together by one team, under one quality system.
in energy-based devices
delivered
supported
Application Expertise
Each modality has its own physics and its own ways of going wrong. A cardiac PFA generator and an argon plasma coagulator share almost nothing on the schematic. What they do share is the part that decides whether the device ships: the control loop, the safety architecture, and the tissue model sitting behind the waveform. We’ve built energy systems across eight modalities.
An RF ablation generator meters energy into tissue whose impedance climbs as it heats, with probe identification, temperature monitoring, and reuse control running underneath. We’ve delivered RF systems for tumor ablation, cardiac EP, neurolysis, and women’s health, from RF power measurement and control loop tuning through to full system integration.
Electrosurgery looks solved until the standard platforms won’t do what the procedure needs. A special-purpose ESU. A combination mechanical and electrosurgical instrument. A cut-and-coag profile nobody sells. We design and manufacture custom electrosurgical generators and instruments for minimally invasive surgery, vessel sealing, and special-purpose applications.
Pulsed field ablation and irreversible electroporation are new enough that few partners have real experience with them. Programmable pulse parameters, pulse wave shaping, multi-probe outputs, R-wave synchronization, and high-voltage safety all have to satisfy clinical, regulatory, and engineering reviewers at once. We bring all three on day one. A PFA program that finds a safety question at V&V has already lost a year.
Electroporation devices for gene therapy, nucleic-acid medicine, and electrochemotherapy marry a drug delivery mechanism to an electrical end effector, then deliver prescriptive energy with the precision the cargo demands. Our experience spans programmable pulse parameters, energy monitoring and safety circuits, multiplexed outputs, and cargo delivery integration.
Microwave ablation generators push power, thermal management, and antenna matching harder than any RF platform. Get one wrong and the lesion tells you. We support microwave ablation system development from generator architecture and tissue modeling through to regulatory-ready capital equipment.
Wound therapy, nitric oxide production, cold plasma, argon plasma coagulation. Process gas metering, arc initiation and regulation, and fluid management engineered alongside the electrical output.
Intravascular and extracorporeal lithotripsy, mechanical shock therapies. Arc power metering and control with hybrid connectors and full system integration.
HIFU and HITU, denervation, extracorporeal focused ultrasound, intravascular ultrasound, transducer drivers.
The Forj Difference
Capital, instrument, and tissue are designed as one system, so the surprises don’t hit at integration. We own the interactions others leave to chance. Electrical, mechanical, software, and clinical effect sit in one room, under one quality system, with one accountable point of contact.
That’s what separates us from power electronics specialists. We don’t supply a piece of your generator. We deliver the whole compliant device.
It also means DFM that simplifies before it amplifies. Fewer parts, fewer failure points, fewer vendors, with sourcing and domestic supply depth planned from the first schematic rather than the last. Nearly all of our energy programs transfer to manufacturing, typically at 30 to 500 units a year with capacity for more.
Interactions owned up front, not found in V&V
Feedback and high-voltage safety designed in, not bolted on
DFM from the start, so nearly every program reaches manufacturing
Sourcing and domestic depth planned early
Energy-Tissue Modeling
The hardest part of a surgical energy program is rarely the electronics. It’s translating what a clinician needs to happen in tissue into a specification an engineer can build and a regulator can test. Most teams discover that gap on the bench, one prototype at a time. We close it in the model first.
We model the electrical, magnetic, thermal, and fluidic interactions between generator, electrode, and tissue, including temperature-dependent tissue parameters, perfusion, the heat sinks and insulators that anatomy puts in the way (arterial flow on one side, bone on the other), and hypothermic and cryogenic behavior where the therapy calls for it.
That feeds electrode design through electrical and thermal optimization with what-if iterations and tolerancing analysis, and it feeds the generator through a virtual generator: algorithm development, power, impedance, and temperature control loops, and lesion optimization, all exercised before hardware exists.
The result is a generator whose control loops were tuned against the tissue they’ll actually meet, and a lesion that behaves in the clinic the way it behaved in the model.
Control & Safety
A surgical energy generator is a power converter whose load is a person, and that load changes as the therapy works. Waveform stability, closed-loop control, and planned error budgets are not features added late in a program. They’re what turns a generator into a medical device, and they’re designed in from the first schematic, with high-voltage safety including NEM and AEM protection treated as architecture rather than a checklist item.
Capabilities
Most surgical energy programs get split three ways, between a power electronics vendor, a design consultancy, and a contract manufacturer. Somewhere in those handoffs the clinical requirement gets lost on its way to becoming an electro-mechanical spec. Forj Medical keeps energy-based medical device development under one roof, delivered by one team from first concept to scaled production. Wherever your program stands today, that’s where we start.
Custom generator architecture from 10 W to 3,700 V peak output, RF power measurement, high-voltage stages, and power conversion designed for efficiency, size, and safety.
Closed-loop power, impedance, and temperature control, control-loop tuning, pulse shaping, R-wave synchronization, and high-voltage safety systems (NEM/AEM).
Electrical and thermal optimization, temperature-dependent tissue parameters, perfusion and heat-sink effects, virtual generator and algorithm development, lesion optimization, and tolerancing analysis.
Probe and electrode design, probe identification and reuse control, hybrid connectors, and electromechanical design of the instrument as part of the system rather than an accessory to it.
Energy combined with fluid and gas management, optical systems, EM navigation and tracking, stimulation and wearables, TETS wireless power, and balloon and catheter integration, in one device.
Regulatory-ready manufacturing of capital equipment and instruments, 30 to 500 units per year with capacity for more, under ISO 13485 and FDA QSR.
Thought Leadership
Perspectives from the engineers who take surgical energy systems to production.
Daniel Friedrichs, Ph.D., senior principal engineer for surgical energy at Forj Medical, was featured in the July 2025 issue of...
Forj Medical’s Daniel Friedrichs, PhD, was featured recently in Medical Design & Outsourcing (MD&O) for his article titled, Systems-level thinking is key...
Daniel Friedrichs, Senior Principal Engineer for Surgical Energy at Forj Medical, was recently featured in the 10th Anniversary edition of...
Pulsed-field ablation (PFA), also known as irreversible electroporation (IRE), is a rapidly emerging technology for tissue ablation that is seeing...
Yes. We design, develop, and manufacture custom generators across RF ablation, electrosurgery, pulsed field ablation, irreversible electroporation, in-vivo electroporation, microwave ablation, plasma, arc discharge, and therapeutic ultrasound, from 10 W to 3,700 V peak output. Generator, instrument, and control are designed as one system.
Yes. Our PFA and IRE work covers programmable pulse parameters, pulse wave shaping and control, high-voltage safety systems, multi-probe systems, navigation and pre-planning integration, and R-wave synchronization. These modalities need clinical, regulatory, and engineering collaboration from the first meeting, and we’re set up for it.
Yes. We enter at concept, prototype, or scale-up. Plenty of programs arrive as a working generator that needs DFM, high-voltage safety and regulatory hardening, and a supply-resilient path to manufacturing. Nearly all of our energy programs make the transfer.
Our surgical energy programs typically run at 30 to 500 units per year, with capacity for more. Manufacturing is under ISO 13485 and FDA QSR, within a network that assembles 250M+ devices and components a year across six global facilities.
