| Medical Equipment Data Acquisition |
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| Today's hospitals, medical screening clinics, and pharmaceutical
labs use different types of electronic monitoring equipment,
most of which can be connected to and
then monitored via the COM ports of a PC. A prime example
is the maternity ward that monitors the contractions of an
expectant mother and the heartbeat
of the fetus. This involves two monitors which when connected
to the same PC allows the heartbeats to be viewed in real-time
at a nursing station, giving
nurses ample time to respond when it comes time to deliver
the baby. The problem is how to handle several patients at
the same time. One possibility, of
course, is to use a different computer for each patient,
but this is not a very efficient use of resources. A more
reasonable and cost-effective solution is to
make use of the hospital's built-in Ethernet LAN and
connect each monitor to a serial device server, allowing
data from all patients to be conveniently
processed by the same computer program. |
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| Another example is the modern medical screening facility
that uses limited staff, but offers personalized examinations
to large numbers of people. In this
case, each staff member, such as a physician, nurse, or medical
technician, operates one station, and each station contains
either a PC or some type of
testing equipment to record data. Testing equipment, such
as the self-contained blood analysis machines shown in the
above figure, is connected to
a serial device server, which is then plugged into the facility's
Ethernet. Results of a patient's blood analysis is sent over
an Ethernet LAN to a central computer
where the data is recorded to await expert diagnosis by a
qualified physician. |
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