Choose the optimal system software for your medical devices

The medical industry has many different kinds of devices that vary in size and complexity. While some devices are used purely for data collection, others are used for more critical tasks like administering therapy, including many that are regulated by the FDA.

As modern medical devices become more complex and have more features than those of the past, new questions arise: How do we build these new systems to meet future demand? And how do we make sure that the system software that controls these devices won’t harm the patient? We must hold medical equipment that is designed to either diagnose or administer therapy to a higher standard than say, a multimedia player, where it may skip a beat, but it will not cause harm to a patient.

No one operating system is right for every medical device. This article looks at whether you need an RTOS, a general-purpose OS, or whether you should “roll your own” depends on the features and functions you require.

To read the article, click here.

About the author
Stephen Olsen is a technical marketing engineer for Mentor Embedded, Mentor Graphics’ embedded software division. He has over 20 years of embedded software experience. During his tenure at Mentor, Olsen has co-chaired VSIA’s Hardware dependent Software (HdS) design working group, worked on the MRAPI specification for the Multicore Association, and authored several papers on system design and power management. He holds a BS degree in Physics from Humboldt State University in California.