Aug 24 2010
According to guest correspondents Robert Day Lynux Works’ Vice President, and George Brooks Director of business development medical segment, virtual machinery that functions with an inherent hypervisor, detaches the medical subsystem applications from the external world.
Normally medical instruments utilize one operating system such as RTOS (real-time operating system), but as complications abound, a second operating system that may be either Linux or Windows, may be used for easy connectivity and better, user-interface to the medical system networks. Running more than one operating system can be achieved, by employing virtualization on the existing physical platform. If the virtual machine (VM), is allowed to function above an innate hypervisor, which could either be type 1 i.e. a software placed on the hardware or else type 2, placed at the peak of a regular OS, with every VM working its individual related applications along with its OS, it could conceptualize its basic memory, crux and devices. A safe and sound platform for virtualization blends a type1 hypervisor with a tiny basic divider to seclude the VM, and provide determinism and relentless action whenever needed.
When a patient staying in a hospital requires his vital signs such as blood oxygenation and EKG to be observed, many sensors need to be fixed to the patient’s body, resulting in an uncomfortable snarling of the wires of the sensors. To avoid this, Bluetooth wireless biometric sensors, could be used to transmit the data to a solo workstation, with a virtual environment inside, working on one or more VM’s for the surveillance and scrutiny of the patient’s vital signs. The sensor for blood oxygenation would send its data to one VM, and simultaneously, another VM would be receiving reports for the heart rate from another sensor and so it goes. The data from all the sensors would then be graphically depicted in a Window OS VM that operates on the same workstation. It could also be utilized for storing the patient feedback or even the hospital network system. The employment of dedicated VM’s in Medical subsystems, leads to high security of the monitoring systems, as whatever happens to the user interface or network, it will not endanger the monitoring systems of the patient.
Both uni and multi-core structure software virtualization bases are readily accessible. Virtualiasation has a number of benefits attached to it, namely increased dependability; isolation of varied work loads averting mutual interference leading to safe environments; enhanced system integrity and data protection, by managing memory boundaries, and thus obstructing rogue software from getting access to the data sources; recycling of legacy or inherited applications with almost no modifications.
Source: http://www.lynuxworks.com/