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by craftinator 1993 days ago
This is good systems design. I've made a system with a similar design (RPI for display and UI, one STM32 for hardware control, another as watchdog) for an industrial marking system, and it's run almost daily for 3 years without any issues.

The great thing about the Pi in this case is that it's non-critical, and if it ever does die, you spend $35 and put in a new SD card.
1 comments
pp-ir 1993 days ago
As soon as ANSM (french equivalent of US FDA) hears "linux", "wifi", "connected", they see a scary green monster...

And to be honnest, I understand their point. How can you certify Linux ? So much code behind... It is not a car multimedia center, it is a ventilator, a class III vital device.

In this project, what was really impressive is the gap between the bare minimum (a 4 lines lcd screen + a few buttons + a pressure sensor, and you can make people breath), and the doctors expectations (curves, flow meters, statistics, O2 sensors...).

This is the same for lots of activity: experts cannot work with basic tools anymore. Only High level experts still can.

Conclusion: do not work with high level experts to build your specifications. Also listen to normal experts and doctors that needs more UX assistance.

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MayeulC 1993 days ago
Thank you for this valuable insight.

Do you think relying on something like a hospital-provided tablet would have worked? Was this considered?

I mean, having that many screens may be a bit redundant, if you can have a single high-quality one. That said, I understand it introduces some complexity due to wireless protocols, paring with the right ventilator, etc.

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pp-ir 1992 days ago
You're welcome.

In our initial requirement list, it was designed to be used in temporary hospitals (any public hall for example).

Screen convergence is not for now in hospitals. Behind one sensor, there is one company that sells its monitor with the sensor. Some old well known sensors now converge to one monitor (philips, edwards life science...), but there is a still one screen for every other functions.

Gathering data (when the constructor made it available) is a mess... look at HL7 specs! To build a medical datalogger, you sometimes must interface to an analog output (it is part of my job).

By the way, most monitors runs windows CE behind. Which is also a problem now: https://www.integrasources.com/blog/windows-ce-end-of-life-m...

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