The world of medical electronics is shifting fundamentally. Equipment designs have traditionally lasted 20 years, with years of heritage and testing behind each design. Now more innovation is demanded, with new features and new versions being developed much faster, based on digital systems. More focus is being put on cost-effective implementation so more units can be deployed across more hospitals and surgeries.

To develop this next generation of safety-critical medical and industrial device, designers and system architects must consolidate hardware, reduce cost, and reduce time-to-market while never compromising their platform’s stability, safety, and security.

This paper addresses what medical system designers require to meet today’s challenges: a combination of multicore[] hardware, operating systems specialized for device certification, hypervisor software, and a consolidated but open development toolchain.