Medical equipment manufacturers face significant challenges, ranging from how to integrate new wireless technologies and satisfy emerging government regulations to protecting systems against security threats. This solution brief describes a proof of concept platform designed by LynuxWorks and Portwell that allows manufacturers to reduce development risk and shorten time to market.

The proof-of-concept design consists of a wireless sensor platform using a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) board. The hardware selected to run the solution was the Portwell WADE- 8067 (Mini-ITX) board with an embedded Intel® Core™2 Duo processor T9400 and Mobile Intel® GM45 Express chipset with Intel® vPro™ technology. By combining hardware-assisted Intel® Virtualization Technology (Intel® VT-x) with the LynxSecure separation kernel and hypervisor software, the solution can simultaneously connect more than 25 wireless biometric sensors. To ensure data integrity, the platform isolates and partitions two different operating systems with their data and resources and controls information flow between the partitions.

The ability to graphically portray data is essential for effective medical monitoring. Portwell’s low-power WADE-8067 board and Intel® chipset provides the integrated graphics needed to support a variety of display interfaces and supports a third display with the addition of a PCI-Express expansion card.

The platform enables medical device developers to start with a proven design and a secure virtualization solution and quickly port proprietary real-time operating system (RTOS) and control software to a single multi-core platform. In addition to the RTOS, the platform is designed to simultaneously run a general purpose OS for human-machine interfaces and other open applications.