Case Study: Revision Control and Remote Support for A Medical Application
A medical equipment company developed a digital imaging system designed to increase visibility through breast tissue while decreasing painful compression for the patient. This new technology is called Molecular Breast Imaging (MBI), and it can identify tumors not always discernible via X-ray technology. But the company found that there were problems with the low cost commodity 1U rackmount computers they were using to compile the imaging data. First, the systems were unreliable and prone to crashing. Also, the new systems that were being offered by their vendor were no longer supporting their required operating system, Windows XP. CP Technologies was able to resolve this problem.
Concerns that Required Addressing
Our customer had been using a standard commercial off-the-shelf workstation. Consequently, there was no revision control for the internal components, as standard workstations are constantly changed with the latest available hardware. From a production perspective, this creates a host of problems. When an order for the medical equipment is placed, the available workstation may be different from what has passed testing. Our customer found that the new components weren’t supporting a legacy operating system required by their medical quality standards. The customer needed to duplicate the exact system configuration as the unit which was originally qualified to the medical standard.
Also the system was prone to failure. Any system failures required a visit from a service technician, as there was no way to remotely access the system to perform diagnostics. As these systems have been sold throughout the country, service visits were a cost concern.
Solutions
CP Technologies helped resolve the issues for our customer by providing a customized 1U rackmount system with a revision controlled server class ATX motherboard. This robust system was designed to reliably handle the data processing required in medical imaging. Also, the components were specifically selected to be available for a minimum of three years and to host the legacy software needed by our customer, resolving the revision control problems of the original workstations and eliminating the operating system conflict. Careful attention to the construction and setup of these systems and the use of high quality components assured reliable operation and stopped the crashing problems.
As an enhanced service, this new system also allows for Intel® AMT 8.0 remote support. Now technicians can remotely access the systems and perform diagnostics, which eliminates the requirement for expensive, in-person visits in many situations. This AMT technology allows for platform audits, software and hardware inventory, remote diagnosis and repair, and software version compliance checks among other features.
Short Term Expense for Long Term Savings
While the system we provided is more expensive that the original commodity workstation used, the life cycle cost of the computer is dramatically lower due to reduced down time as well as cost savings for travel for repair visits. CP Technologies has over a decade of experience helping customers meet challenging system requirements.