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

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.

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.

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.

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. ;)

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?

--

"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 : )