A personal computer as a universal controller for medical-focused appliances

Abstract

Modern medical-focused appliances are sophisticated devices that can process complex data and control various subsystems. This is the reason why they require a custommade advanced Graphical User Interface that is able to control all these features. In order to build such a Graphical User Interface we first need to choose a proper hardware platform and then an operating system for which we will build the Graphical User Interface application. As for the hardware, an industrial-targeted Mini-ITX mainboard meets our needs of reliability, stability and speed. The mainboard is based on the Personal Computer x86 platform and we can expand its features with peripherals such as CompactFlash card for data storage, touchscreen LCD for user interaction and an external board, connected to the USB port of the mainboard, for data interchange. The operating system used is Microsoft Windows Embedded CE in a combination with a Dynamically-Linked Library to control the features of the external USB board. With such a configuration we obtain a fast and compact controller with data interchange capability and a sophisticated Graphical User Interface. Since the Graphical User Interface is custom-made and the operating system gets loaded fast the end-user does not have a feeling to be using a PC. The main benefit is the system’s upgradeability because even with major hardware changes we can still reuse all our code to rebuild our Graphical User Interface and transfer it on a new platform without losses.