Tuesday 20 November 2012

Embedded Personal computer solutions to the Medical Applications and devices

By Oded Amir


With an increase in pressures to both lessen the time to market and increase the number of features in their latest models, many medical hardware manufacturers are turning to off-the-shelf Computer boards in making these designs. Using inserted P.C boards can significantly cut back the design time of feature-rich medical apparatus, but just if the feature set of the board is matched to the application.

Understanding what things to ask is vital to picking an embedded Personal computer solution. By finding out more about the features available on embedded Computers, it gets easier to understand which things to ask.

Reasons for Using an Inserted Personal computer or ARM Base solution

During the past, it was more common for designers to select a microprocessor or microcontroller chip, design the supporting circuitry around it, and add the special inputs and outputs required by the application. In numerous cases, this is still a fascinating path to take. It gives the most control over exactly what features are included in the final design. Each part of the circuit in a totally customized design is there for an excellent reason precise to the end application. Nonetheless fully customized designs can take substantial time to get from the drawing board to the market.

Reducing the time to market is one of the biggest reasons for selecting an off-the-shelf embedded PC for medical applications. If the core processor circuitry is prepared to be wired into a system, it saves on circuit design and debugging time. It also reduces the time spent on developing firmware, because inserted PCs typically already have basic input/output system (BIOS) firmware that initializes the core components, tests imperative subsystems, and loads the application program. In an increasingly cut-throat environment, shaving 1 or 2 months or perhaps weeks of a product development cycle may affect the success of a product.

One more reason that embedded Computers are being used more frequently is that the variety of features that users expect is steadily increasing. Though alphanumeric liquid-crystal displays (LCDs) are utilized for some jobs, such as blood sugar monitoring, it is beginning to become more workaday for a modern piece of medical equipment to have a full-color graphical display. This permits more information to be conveyed to the user, but at the cost of increasing the quantity of computing hp required, as well as the complexness of the software. Embedded Computers can help to answer that issue by employing the large number of graphics software already available on the desktop PC.

Embedded PC- Specific Features

There are several reasons, for example product lifetime or size, for using an embedded Computer instead of a desktop Computer motherboard in a medical application. However , the big reason is that inserted Computers have features that are not found on desktop PCs features that encompasses the following: Digital I/O, Analog I/O, Solid state disks, Different system buses such as PC/104, CompactPCI, for example.




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