Medical

The use of IT in Healthcare is becoming more and more prevalent as a way to increase service levels and reduce costs.

Programs such as the UK’s Electronic Patient Register on an enterprise level are very well publicised, however there are a range of other much more personal uses for IT that are benefiting from the use of Microsoft Windows Embedded technologies such as:

Patient Monitoring in Hospitals
Many monitoring solutions are based upon bespoke hardware that interacts directly with the patient. This often has bespoke software running a single dedicated application. Having multiple units around a patient often makes monitoring of the overall state confusing or time consuming.

Medical OEMS are developing medical visualisation applications that bring together all monitoring information into one place. These run on PC products that designed specifically for medical environments.

Often these applications are running on Windows XP Embedded as:

• Initial applications can be written on Desktops running XP professional and then deployed on XP Embedded
• Windows XP Embedded allows customisation of the splash screen and GUI to disguise the use of PC architectures reducing tinkering and theft
• Removal of XP components and running from Storage Media makes the system inherently more stable and reliable
• Multi Lingual support out of the box enables the same software solution to be deployed in most regions of the world with little re-work

At Home
There is increasing pressure on Health Services to provide a better quality of service. One of the current drives is to continue providing a standard of healthcare and service in the patient's home after leaving hospital. Another drive to provide an ongoing record of patients in long-term care by monitoring them in their home environment and analysing the data without needing a home or surgery visit. These initiatives are commonly known as ‘TeleHealth’ and ‘TeleCare’.

The requirement for connected, easy to use end-to-end solutions are a perfect fit for Windows Embedded technologies as:

• One development platform can be used for Patient, Server, Surgery and Hospital devices – Visual Studio
• The standard communication protocols and high levels of security are built into all Microsoft Windows Embedded operating systems – CE, XP or Server protecting confidential patient information
• Multi Lingual devices are easily deployed using the built in Multi Lingual support
• Connecting technologies such as USB and Ethernet and future technologies will be supported
• Third party applications to build more user friendly devices are already available for most Microsoft platforms ie voice recognition for visually impaired use in the home

Patient Records in Hospital
All jokes about surgeons or doctors handwriting on records and prescriptions being legible aside, the real-time recording and reviewing of patient records and images is getting closer to reality.

With the advent of standards such as DICOM and PACS, PC style systems are becoming more prevalent on hospital wards in the hands of surgeons, doctors and nursing staff.

Portable, battery powered systems that are networked and rugged enough to survive use in a hospital environment are leading to the use of Windows CE and XP Embedded as:

• Use of storage media removes moving parts and hence increases reliability of the hardware
• The technologies used such as touch screen, Compact Flash and WiFi are supported out of the box by Windows CE and XP Embedded
• Dedicated applications can be developed running on an operatng system designed for a specific purpose ensuring a more easy and more intuitive use in stressful situations
• Data can be easily transferred from system to server as Microsoft has designed its’ operating systems with communication as a core function
• Multi Lingual support enables the same devices to be used worldwide with little major surgery being required of the application