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Assessing MCU performance for medical applications

Former Member
Hello,
 
In order to design new medical devices, am looking for advice.
 
How  do you assess the performance of the latest MCU’s which integrate  analog peripherals, connectivity, user interface, …for your medical  application without spending too much time and effort?
 
How  do you validate the architecture of your next generation product  knowing the increasing complexity with the addition of sensors,  connectivity and Rich User interfaces?
 
have also posted the same kind of message in Medical Group, but thought it could be interesting as well for this community.
 
Thanks,
 
Capitol

  • Hi Capitol,

     

    You have just asked the $64,000 question.

    First and foremost, you need to understand the requirements for the device you plan to build and its expected migration path.

    Next, you want to look at the detailed timing issues and storage requirements.  These provide you with the core issues your device will need for the future.  If your device is planned for a 10+ year lifecycle, then a rule of thumb is that you plan for 50% spare capacity in each area.  That means that your initial software only uses 50% of the cpu cycles, 50% of the installed memory, 50% of the digital and analog pins.

    Now you have a shopping list.  You can quickly look at the current technology and access if the component has a good track record of being incrementally upgraded by the developer and that they have a good history of supporting their components.

    Once you find a manufacturer that has all of the items on your shopping list, you want to see if the components are second sourced.  If so, you have a good starting point for selecting that component.

    Next you want to look at software development support with the same criteria that you used for the hardware.  Again, when you have verified that the vendor can provide your current and future needs, you have a go.

     

    Even with all of this effort, you can still be overtaken by events and have to start over, but if you use this process, you will always have a good basis to show the value of the hardware and software you have selected.

     

    Hope this helps.

    DAB

  • Hi Dab and Capitol,

     

    Agree with DAB on migration path.. its basic when you have a 10+ lifecycle common in some medical devices, also some suppliers guarantee 15 years minimum of device manufacturing (i.e. product longevity program).

     

    Agree also on software development support, common tools like IAR, KEIL, GreenHills (they also provide support on FDA certification process guidance), even free complimentary software stacks like USB stacks specialized for medical device communication come in handy and speed up development time. Medical developer knows medical software and should specialize in the main application, saves development time to use software stacks, graphical user interface, code generation tools, etc.

     

    For other components besides the MCU, 2 approaches can be followed, either integrate some peripherals like opamps and transimpedance amplifiers requiered to instrument signal, even accelerometers like in the case of pedometers together with an MC... or dont integrate them and have a more cost effective MCU but have the procurement logistics and multiple suppliers selection (could be big issue if you get an external opamp end of life! and more expensive and space consuming also)

     

    In my opinion Freescale provides good solution with their product longevity program for kinetis k50 microcontrollers (ARM CORTEX M4 based! with DSP functionality that can be used for filters).

     

    www.freescale.com/k50

     

     

    best regards