Intel® Atom™ Processor-based COMs Meet the Demands of Medical Electronics

Medical original-equipment manufacturers (OEMs) face many challenges over the lifecycle of their products. Those challenges range from performance and reliability requirements and passing certifications to ensuring that their technology and products keep up with evolving needs. The continuing evolution of processors and the emergence of new, high-speed, serial differential interfaces challenge medical OEMs to implement new capabilities. At the same time, they must focus on their core business and adhere to the product-release timeframe.

Medical-equipment designers have some embedded-computing options available to them, such as commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) motherboards, long-life industrial motherboards, and high-volume application-specific custom solutions. Some distinct advantages are available with a computer-on-module (COM), semi-custom embedded solution with a CPU module and application- specific baseboard. These solutions include high levels of processing performance and I/O bandwidth in a compact form factor. More significantly, COM solutions are inherently modular. They help designers achieve faster time to market, reduced development cost, minimized design risk, simplified future upgrade paths, scalability, and increased application longevity. All of these benefits lead to the potential for increased market share.

Providing new applications to improve medical imaging and diagnostics is one of the greatest challenges facing medical- equipment designers. At the same time, recent advances in processing technology are squeezing more performance and power efficiency into ultra-small packages. One example of such performance/power efficiency can be found in the latest smallform- factor, industry-standard COMs. These solutions are based on the latest 45-nm Intel® processor technology.

Medical-Device Design Challenges

Medical electronic equipment aims to enhance patient care and reduce cost in a variety of healthcare specialties. Ultimately, its goal is to save lives. The OEMs that are developing medical-imaging applications are faced with significant design challenges including power consumption, scalability, processing capabilities, and application support. As the demand for mobile point-of-care devices increases, size, weight, and further power constraints also will be added to the mix. For a medical professional to examine a patient thoroughly and assess his or her condition promptly with such a take-everywhere diagnostic tool, high-resolution images are required. Those images need to be manipulated in real time. Inherent in this demand is the expectation that the device will have high-speed capabilities in terms of processing, video and data conversion, and communications—all in a minimally sized package.

Unlike the consumer market, some medical devices must meet longevity requirements of 10 to 15 years. As the medical industry, computing standards, and technology advance, the requirements for a given device are likely to change several times over its life cycle. Thus, devices must be scalable and upgradeable so that applications can be updated without completely redesigning the device. The time to market for embedded medical applications is a concern that’s made more challenging by the amount of time allotted to testing for and approval by the FDA and other regulatory entities. Testing is a significant financial endeavor for any device. But the stringent requirements faced by medical OEMs mean the design and development budget must be monitored closely for continual optimization.

Advantages Of COMs

Hardware design, firmware and driver development, and interface testing are just a few of the aspects of any embedded design. Upgrades may include modifying some or all of these areas. Designing a full custom motherboard and its enclosure requires extended development time. It also results in nonstandard device size and interfaces. A smaller, fully custom, FPGA-based design is similarly unappealing due to the cost of developing drivers that are specific for every interface at each revision. The testing required also is a problem. Engineering, debugging, and supporting a single-board computer for each new processor and bus simply isn’t feasible. After all, a custom design can average as long as 24 weeks.

The COM approach puts an entire computer host complex on a small-form-factor module. That module can be mounted on carrier boards that contain application-specific I/O and power circuitry. All standard PC functions, such as graphics, Ethernet, and buses, can be added via an off-the-shelf module. A custom baseboard is then developed to interface with application-specific peripherals like storage devices, expansion sockets, and COM connectors. Given this modularity, medical OEMs can take advantage of the cost reduction and shortened development timeframe that COMs provide when they’re expanding product portfolios or modifying existing designs—especially those that must be kept current over a five-to-ten-year lifecycle.

The COM approach puts an entire computer host complex on a small-form-factor module. That module can be mounted on carrier boards that contain application-specific I/O and power circuitry. All standard PC functions, such as graphics, Ethernet, and buses, can be added via an off-the-shelf module. A custom baseboard is then developed to interface with application-specific peripherals like storage devices, expansion sockets, and COM connectors. Given this modularity, medical OEMs can take advantage of the cost reduction and shortened development timeframe that COMs provide when they’re expanding product portfolios or modifying existing designs—especially those that must be kept current over a five-to-ten-year lifecycle.

Performance upgrades can be implemented without a single modification to the baseboard. Rather than redesigning the entire motherboard, a new module from the same family can simply be installed. The device will then be ready for the approval process. This changes the effort from a multi-engineer project over several months to a single-engineer, one-week task. Because the I/O would not require modification in all updates, the failure risks of the EN 60601-1 Parts 1, 2, and 4 tests are reduced greatly for an estimated retesting cost savings of 40%. Such schedule and cost optimizations are critical to remaining competitive in the market.

An Advanced COM Solution

Until recently, pocket ultrasound devices were largely ineffective because image quality was sacrificed in favor of mobility. The power consumption of available processors has remained high, which impairs fanless designs and reduces battery life. In addition, no standards-based embedded-computing platform has quite met all of the device requirements. Advanced process technology—incorporated into an ultra-small COM form factor— has alleviated these problems to provide a standardized, ultra-portable, high-performance embedded-computing platform. That platform offers interfaces like Gigabit Ethernet, PCI Express x1 lane, and two SATA II ports.

For example, the nanoETXexpress family of COM-Expresscompatible modules has a footprint that’s just 39% of the original COM-Express-standard “Basic” form-factor module (see the Figure). The nanoETXexpress-SP COM is based on the Intel Atom processor. Along with the Intel® System Controller Hub US15W, the Intel® Atom™ processor Z5xx series provides significant reductions in footprint and thermal design power compared to the Ultra Low Voltage Intel® Celeron® M processor. Clock speeds between 1.1 and 1.6 GHz achieve high performance within a thermal design power of less than 5 W, allowing for fanless designs. Superior image quality is provided via support for 32-bit floating-point operations, hardware video decoding, dual independent displays, hyper-threading technology, and 24-bit color. The power-optimized front side bus can transfer data at rates up to 533 MHz. In addition, the C6 low-power state reduces power consumption while 13 additional states in SSE3 improve multimedia instruction support. Options also are available for USB and wireless connectivity.

With the release of this module, applications that previously faced barriers due to size, performance issues, or power-consumption limitations can now be developed using a standard COM implementation. Adherence to the PICMG COM Express standard ensures compatibility and expandability. One possible application of this new COM is a pocket-sized ultrasound machine. Such a machine could transmit images wirelessly to a standard PC for remote diagnosis. For instance, an EMT could use this device while first on the scene so that a doctor could begin the diagnosis and treatment process even before personally attending the patient. This application could provide convenience and time savings while improving the quality of patient care. Many possibilities exist for mobile medical devices using credit-card-sized COMs. In some cases, they may even help clinicians save lives.

Christine Van De Graaf is the product marketing manager for Kontron America’s Embedded Modules Division located in Northern California’s Silicon Valley. She has more than seven years of experience working in the embedded-computing technology industry. Van De Graaf holds an MBA in marketing management from California State University, East Bay, Hayward, CA. Contact Info: christine.vandegraaf@ us.kontron.com 510.661.2220 x 250