Multi-parameter patient monitors are mostly used in bedsides for patients, in Intensive care units, acute care units and emergency rooms in hospital or clinical settings. These equipment collects and reports continuous variables like an ECG or EEG, and sampled variables like temperature and blood pressure. Patient monitors of this kind have capability to display information, to send alarm conditions to alert staff, to collect and distribute radiological data and to monitor various life support systems among other functions.
Reliability, high resolution displays, accuracy, power management and security are just some of the key considerations for these patient monitors. These systems need to have the processing power, powerful enough to acquire, integrate, filter, and interpret several biotelemetry sources at once: at the same time providing alarm conditions, displaying data, sending and collating data from the network.
At the heart of a typical modern bedside multi-parameter patient monitor is a powerful System -on-a-chip like the Zynq Ultrascale+ MPSoC with the option of single, dual or quad core configurations along with connectivity to biometric analog modules, both wired and wireless connectivity, flash storage, USB, and supporting one or more high resolution local displays. Patient monitors are now battery operated and with a wall outlet, will be network enabled and will have the capability to send secure data to a hybrid/private cloud for analytics and storage.
Here is a high-level block diagram to create a smart, connected, high performance low power patient monitor with a dual or quad core Zynq Ultrascale+ MPSOC with an optimally configured fabric depending on the performance per watt and BOM cost requirements. Depending on the architectural requirements and if it’s a lower-end monitor, a Zynq 7000 device can also be used.
The multi-processing ARM A53 system is very powerful and competitive to any ASSP devices out there. A complex requirement could support using a hypervisor with guest OS versions running Linux for a variety of tasks like control plane, monitoring, diagnostics and analytics. Many supported real-time operating systems like QNX, VxWorks, Micrium or ThreadX can be used for real-time tasks.
The clear benefits of a Zynq Ultrascale+ based architecture in a clinical patient monitor are: