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."

Comments

Micro HTML eh?

[nizcolas]

How long before we get the first micro pop up ad?

Re:Code blue (screeen of death)

[Scott Hale]

the file size is reduced to a mere 66 Kb of memory

I doubt that's Windows

Who wrote this?

[JoshuaDFranklin]

Jim Todd is director of sales and marketing for Amulet Technologies

Makes you wonder if any of it is true.

Re:Who wrote this?

[Anonymous Coward]

It pretty much is. He's a nice guy too.

I'm working on a commercial product using Amulet Technologies' chip (really!), and it's very nice. The compiler could be a bit more verbose, and you could have a bit finer grained control over the functionality of the GUI module, but the rapid development and ease of coding are really quite good. You can whip together a GUI very, very quickly, using HTML and standard graphics files. There is a dizzying array of functionality available - wiping graphics such as the shown thermometer, line plots, numerical displays, all kinds of great stuff - all through a serial port and a simple protocol.

I know it's uncool to say good things about non-GPL'ed commercial companies jere (aside from Apple for some strange reason), but this is a very cool product for rapid development.

Re:Who wrote this?

[westendgirl]

I'm a marketing freelancer & consultant who frequently ghostwrites articles and success stories for companies. It's unlikely that the director of marketing wrote the article. More likely, a coordinator or specialist wrote it -- or they outsourced to a freelancer. So you're not even getting the goods from a senior manager. :)
In fact, even when you see an article with a byline that credits an engineer or other techie, there's a huge chance that someone in marketing wrote it. This doesn't mean that the article is garbage. It just means that they interviewed the techs and wrote it up. The tech people still have to sign off on it. When something that isn't true goes through, I find it's often because the techies weren't willing to take the time to read it through before signing off on it. Of course, I admit that sometimes the marketers go off on a Dilbert-style tangent. But that's often because no one takes the time to read their stuff before okaying it!
Still, I have to admit that Amulet took a bizarre step in crediting its marketing director. Usually, you could find *someone* in R&D to take the credit. ;)

Slight problem with the compression

[heironymouscoward]

From "almost half a megabit" to 66kb?

500,000 bits is 62,500 bytes.

I hope they meant 0.5 megabytes.

Cannot avoid thinking of Therac

[EggSausageBaconAndSp]

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.

Re:Cannot avoid thinking of Therac

[nickd]

Safety does also include making it easy and intuitive for people to use it so that they can operate it safely..

Actually, many do run MS OS's

[eericson]

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.

I worry...

[littlerubberfeet]

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?

Think of the Children!

[tsanth]

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.

from the finger-painting-dept.

[Merik]

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

standardised medical embedded gui

[joshwa]

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.

Damn, a real breakthrough!

[aiken_d]

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

Re:Code blue (screeen of death)

[niko9]

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?

--

Without a GUI, this would happen

[HungWeiLo]

dr_pepr_> ls
dr_pepr_> . .. hmo_files
dr_pepr_> cd hmo_files
dr_pepr_> ls
dr_pepr_> . .. new_drug_test_subjects
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

"Authoring Tool"

[sbszine]

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 : )