Originally Published MX September/October 2005
IT IN HEALTHCARE
Choosing Systems and Software|
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Device developers incorporating embedded systems and software into their products are faced with a number of options that must be selected based on their individual system's needs.
The embedded systems market, like others, is driven by both performance and cost, says Joseph Wallace, marketing manager for WIN Enterprises (North Andover, MA), a developer of customized embedded systems and controllers.
"Since many components do the same thing, developers typically use the component that is cheapest at the time of production," he says. "Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) motherboards are readily available and less expensive than custom-made boards for small quantities, but may offer more functionality than required by the developer. On the other hand, the COTS board may offer less-than-optimal functionality around which the engineers have to work to attain their desired performance."
If a developer's quantity is large enough, a customized board might be appropriate, Wallace says. Customized boards allow developers to determine exactly which components to use on the board, eliminating needless parts and potentially greatly reducing costs.
As for input/output components, Wallace says the device industry has moved away from legacy components—such as serial ports, which require more physical space on motherboards—and moved toward Ethernet and USB for machine-to-machine and machine-to-peripheral connections.
"This transition probably has to do more with pricing and the interface itself than with speedier transfer rates or improved performance," he says. In terms of functionality and interfaces, says Wallace, software has much less to do with the final product than hardware.
"A blood analyzer running on Linux will not have any ports or interfaces that you wouldn't see on a system running Windows," he says. "In addition, there is no intrinsic benefit to using either software, in terms of functionality. The Windows blood analyzer will not produce more accurate results than the Linux system—or any other software package or architecture, for that matter."
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