Case Study: Custom Medical Panel PC – Endoscope Hygiene & Cleaning

Introduction

A world leader in endoscope storage and transportation solutions, BVM had been working with our client for over 10 years in the supply of off the shelf industrial Panel PC solutions for their drying cabinets and washing disinfector solutions for endoscope conditioning and packaging.

Through acquisition, new products were brought into our clients product portfolio, one of which offered a cutting edge long-term ‘active’ aseptic storage and transportation system of endoscopes, including GI and theatre based scopes, for up to 100 days, the complete system utilising a touch panel PC system within their portable cart.

The challenge

Our client had been cannibalising a commercial monitor product for gain of the TFT – and marrying it with semi industrial system PC. Due to the obsolescence of the embedded PC and the labour content of the operation, our client approached us in the search for a more exacting  solution, one that could be customised for their aesthetics (with corporate livery), layout of their requested  i/o  and the providing of discreteness involving power and COMs cabling.

Our Solution – a Medical Custom Panel PC

The new design featured an Atom based, N3160 Braswell thin Mini-ITX solution, incorporated into a chassis with 15” TFT with 5 wire resistive touch-screen to provide a slim-line profile Panel PC. A customised Windows 10 IoT O/S was optimised to provide managed shut down in the event of unexpected power loss.

The unit combined filtered air cooling with waterproof top and sides (IPx3 rating) for ease of cleaning and protection from liquid spills during the normal use of endoscope packing system. The product is used in a hospital environment where the certification required is only for IT equipment levels (CE), however, the system was designed to meet a higher EMC standard to allow medical certification to be gained, if required, for the future.

Value to the client

Due to the hardware and software selection, our clients PC solution has become more stable and robust in its running, better equipped around component obsolescence  – and has a vastly reduce labour content.

In line with the latter, engineering resource has been freed to further develop software, incorporating new features allowing the unit to become deployable in any global territory, creating new opportunity.

 Fact File

To date, 50pcs of the new design medical cart incorporating the BVM custom designed Panel PC have been installed in the UK – and with the solution now being sold into additional Western European  territories, our clients expectation is provide 100 carts per annum fitted with their custom PC solution from 2019 onwards.