As I'm not quite familiar with medical devices, I was fascinated by this long article from Medical Electronics Manufacturing.
It tells us that "new technology makes graphical user interfaces (GUIs) a fast and cost-effective way to add features and improve on existing designs" of these medical devices. And it really looks simple to use.
Using any laptop or desktop PC, a GUI can be designed with ease using an application with a hypertext markup language (HTML) editor such as Macromedia Dreamweaver or even more commonplace software such as Microsoft Front Page.
Having HTML embedded in the hardware of the GUI translates to hours and days of development time saved compared with alternative methods used by other GUI development programs. In the end, a GUI can now be integrated in 90% less time than before, and a GUI drastically increases the ease-of-use factor in any device.
Before this, the medical device manufacturers had to hire electronics engineers and programmers to develop specific codes for each device and every kind of display. This obviously was a long and expensive process.
GUIs are now developed using a graphical operating system in silicon, a dedicated microprocessor with a liquid-crystal display (LCD) controller. Configurations such as these do not require any additional memory subsystems and will work in conjunction with any microprocessor or microcontroller that is part of an existing embedded system.
The single most important element of the integrated GUI is the embedded micro-HTML. This code is ready for operation out of the box in an application-specific GUI controller chip, which integrates a graphical operating system in silicon and a dedicated microprocessor unit with an LCD controller. Everything a developer needs is included on the chip.
And when the author, Jim Todd, from Amulet Technologies, is talking about micro-HTML, he's not kidding.
The GUI shipped with the Amulet Technologies starter kit, for example, contains almost half a megabit of information in HTML. When all of the gifs, widgets, and other files are imported and compiled into micro-HTML, the file size is reduced to a mere 66 Kb of memory.
The graphical OS chip can support VGA resolution of 640 x 480 pixels. Here is what it looks like (Credit: Amulet Technologies).
Todd examines several successful case studies where manufacturers dramatically improve their products by integrating a GUI. And here is his conclusion.
It is clear that incorporating a GUI is an option that should be considered for updating a product's design and capabilities. Newly available technology enables medical device manufacturers to avoid additional costs and design complexity without sacrificing time to market.
Source: Jim Todd, Amulet Technologies, for Medical Electronics Manufacturing, Fall 2003
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