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Integrating A GUI Into An Existing Medical Device
Roland Piquepaille writes "As I'm not quite familiar with medical devices, I was fascinated by this long article from Medical Electronics Manufacturing. It tells us that "new technology makes graphical user interfaces (GUIs) a fast and cost-effective way to add features and improve on existing designs" of these medical devices. And it really looks simple to use. You just need a standard PC and an HTML authoring tool to develop your GUI. It is then compiled in micro-HTML and embedded in silicon, leading to a graphical OS chip which doesn't need to be powerful or have tons of memory. "The GUI shipped with the Amulet Technologies starter kit, for example, contains almost half a megabit of information in HTML. When all of the gifs, widgets, and other files are imported and compiled into micro-HTML, the file size is reduced to a mere 66 Kb of memory." This overview contains more details and a photograph of such a GUI at work."
How long before we get the first micro pop up ad?
If you get an error, type "OVERRIDE" or "SECURITY OVERRIDE" and then try the optimize command again.
I doubt that's Windows
Makes you wonder if any of it is true.
From "almost half a megabit" to 66kb?
500,000 bits is 62,500 bytes.
I hope they meant 0.5 megabytes.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
I cannot read such an article without thinking of the Therac-25 catastrophe (several people being killed or severely injured because of a poorly designed X-ray device).
My 2 cents: When developing a medical device, don't focus on a nice'n'cool UI, but on safety.
You'd actually be suprised how many systems run Winnt or 98 as their OS. A good example are the Siemens Allegra series ultrasound systems (mid range, specializes in General Imaging, not cardio). They run WINNT as a backend with a custom app handling HW interaction. (Which is causing an interesting political battle with their Semi-Recent aquisition, and my old employer, Acuson. All of our systems ran a custom build of Linx OS as the OS with UI in X11.
Most of the MRI, CT, and PACS systems are built on industrial grade Unix OSs, but you'll still see a ton of MS around on the lower end devices.
The evil monkey commands you to dance.
How robust is this? I hope they are using QNX or VxWorks. I do think that a GUI could eliminate some errors and make training easier.
an application:Centrifuge. One company evaluating a GUI has a significant stake in the centrifuge market. Its design teams' core competencies are motors and speed control.
As the centrifuge spins too fast and destroys the samples. Maybe destrying DNA evidence and getting a death row inmate killed.
Newly available technology enables medical device manufacturers to avoid additional costs and design complexity without sacrificing time to market
Are they more worried about medical safety or time-to market?
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
I could see how something like this could be useful, particularly when building devices which will be used primarily by children: acute asthma sufferers, for example, are told to take daily spirometer readings. The problem with this is that many children will either forget or refuse to take the readings.
Much of the time, children will visit their asthma doctor having "forgotten" to take their daily readings. To make up for it, they take a dozen or so readings right before the appointment: the data is flawed and as a result, treatment suffers. With cutesy GUIs like this integrated into the spirometer, children can look at their daily readings as more of a game than a chore.
A graphical OS chip eliminates the need for a marketing manager to possess a certification in C++ or other programming languages to develop the GUI. Rather, all that is needed is a PC, a commonplace text editor, and perhaps even the most basic and widely available graphics programs, such as Microsoft Paint.
WoW! no longer will bad design be limited to the web. Now i can enjoy poor quality MSfingerpaint on my critical life support devices
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What is the sound of this sentence?
ok, why is this special? it's a standardised embedded gui for medical systems. you know, like the ones offered by half a dozen other companies (symbian, qnx, etc)
I guess it's because you get to code in html instead of C. Great, so now you can hire a TOTAL idiot html jockey to design your life-and-death medical interface instead of a (slightly-) better-trained C programmer?
Whoop tee doo.
Well they claimed to compress it down to 66Kb, which would seem to be 500000 -> 66000. That's 500:66 ration = 7.6:1, which isn't so bad.
Imagine being able to take a half a megabit and reduce it to only 66K. Why, compressed, that data is only 2K larger than the uncompressed version. Eureka!
(1024 * 512) = 524288 bits, or 65536 bytes, or 64K.
Cheers
-b
If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
This could give a whole new meaning to the blue screen of death. I sure hope they're not using Winbloze on a critical piece of life support.
I don't think the OS is the major issue. Poor GUI designs in all types of devices are rampant.
From my experience, the Lifepak 12 Defibrillator leaves alot to be desired as far as the user interface is concerned. It's nice to have fancy GUI (oohh shiny things!), but if it's clunky in it's excecution and you have to spend 30 seconds to do simple things like synchronized cardioversion then....
I would love to see and Apple desgined defibrillator. It would probably only have 4 buttons and you could work any function in less than 5 seconds.
Medics can dream, can't they?
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dr_pepr_> ls .. hmo_files .. new_drug_test_subjects
dr_pepr_> .
dr_pepr_> cd hmo_files
dr_pepr_> ls
dr_pepr_> .
dr_pepr_> rm -rf new*
dr_pepr_> uname
dr_pepr_> unknown i586 gentoo 2.4.17custom
dr_pepr_> uptime
dr_pepr_> 8:08 am up 3 days load average: 0.0, 0.0, 0.0
dr_pepr_> lynx www.slashdot.org
Connection timed out
dr_pepr_> lynx www.slashdot.org
Connection timed out
dr_pepr_> ipconfig
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
Keep in mind that in many outfits, Lifepak doubles as an EMT's AED; thus, the standard "on, analyze, shock" buttons are there. It's kind of serving double duty, but all really important functions are pretty easy to get to fast, with only a little bit of practice.
and yeah, there are actually 2 button defibrillators -- on, and analyze/shock. However, they're definetly not as powerful as Lifepak, and are designed for use by your average civilian, not an EMT or a medic.
at least you're using LP12 -- on half our fleet we have LP10, which is more than a little outdated.
filter: +3. Hey, look! all the trolls went away!
You just need a standard PC and an HTML authoring tool to develop your GUI.
I hope they mean a text editor. I would hate to entrust my life to a piece of machinery with a GUI 'authored' in FrontPage : )
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
This is why I like Slashdot. Not just one, but two medics are posting comments on this thread. I also regularly read comments from lawyers, doctors, engineers, accountants, physicists, chemists, professors, firefighters, etc. Communities are more valuable when there is strong representation by many groups. Slashdot seems to be dominated by computer-jockeys, but it's great that it's not just computer-jockeys.
I think I found a new profession: /> />
<html>
<head>
<title>Life Support System</title>
</head>
<body>
<input type="button" value="Live" onclick="live();"
<input type="button" value="Die" onclick="die();"
</body>
</html>
Back in the day, I worked for a software company working on a project called "iVision" with Eli Lilly. This was in the pre-widespread-web days, and so the idea was to make the status of medical devices viewable via a LAN, presenting to the medical staff at the "nursing station" a consolidated graphical view of all the devices on a given hospital floor.
One thing that I would expect developers to still have to contend with when using embedded web servers, is the very extensive approval process for medical devices. At some point of integration, functionality added to a medical device via software becomes considered part of the medical device, and as such subject to a very long regulatory approval process. This required us to make fairly counter-intuitive limitations to our prototype system, including the notion that though we could show information about the device (alarms, infusion time remaining, etc.), we could not change what the device was doing via our software (e.g. turn off an alarm on an infusion pump in another room once it was acknowledged).
It's been several years, so I'm not sure how the regulations may have changed, but I'd suggest if you're using embedded HTTP on medical devices don't assume you can just upgrade/tweak/patch on the fly like it was a public web server--you probably can't.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
During my medical training when I was doing time at the neonatology unit at one of the hospitals. I was suprised/shocked to see that one of the ventilators was running a version of windows. Ok, I figured must be a specially designed cut down, more stable version, but then I looked carefully.. and beside the start button was the quick launch tool bar with an icon for internet explorer and media player - that is just plain scarry! would you trust MS with your neonates life?
Thankfully, for the few weeks i was there I never came across anyone complaining bout it. I cant seem to find it on the web, I might have to go back and see what the model and brand was...
I have one of the units. The developers kit comes with a touch sensitive lcd screen. The "html" you write just makes buttons and things on the lcd for you to interact with.
...
When you "click" a button on the touch screen, a string of several bytes representing one of up to 255 commands is sent to whatever device you connect the amulet unit to. All the amulet does is convert a touch on the lcd screen to a number and send it out serially.
While it's certainly a nifty thing, and I actually have a use for it (custom control of some A/V gear), I think the whole thing is a little over hyped, not that we aren't used to that
ps - it's not just for medical devices. You can control your garbage disposal with it if you're so inclined.