Company: VitaconWeb Site: http://www.vitacon.com Country or Region: NorwayIndustry: ManufacturingPartner: L&T Integrated Engineering ServicesPartner Web Site: http://www.lnties.com/

Company ProfileVitacon develops, manufactures, and markets products to treat incontinence, and diagnose bladder dysfunction. The company’s medical devices are available through worldwide distributors.

Software and Services Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R2 Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Platform Builder For Windows

Embedded CE 6.0

Hardware OMAP 3530 processor 8.4" TFT Touch Screen Display with

LED backlight Li-Polymer battery

For more information about other Microsoft customer successes, please visit:www.microsoft.com/casestudieswww.microsoft.com/embedded

“We estimate that the VitaScan Portable increases a hospital worker’s efficiency by 50 percent compared to manual paper-based processes.”Svein Wognild, Chairman, Vitacon

Bladder Monitoring System Increases Hospital Staff Efficiency by 50 Percent

Medical device OEM saves 100 development days using Windows EmbeddedMedical device OEM Vitacon gave L&T Integrated Engineering Services a one-year deadline to design and build the ultimate portable bladder monitor. For the device’s operating system, L&T chose Microsoft Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R2 for its reliability, integrated Bluetooth connectivity, and multilingual support. By leveraging powerful development tools and technologies L&T reduced development time of the VitaScan Ultrasound Bladder Monitor by approximately 100 person-days to make the deadline.

SituationVitacon has been in the uro-gynecology field for more than 20 years, developing, manufacturing, and marketing products for diagnosing bladder dysfunction and treating incontinence. Vitacon medical devices are well known equipment in hospitals and clinics worldwide.

Seeking to build up a wider range of products for pelvic floor disorders, Vitacon’s management team made the decision to expand into ultrasound diagnostic devices. Ultrasound bladder scanning for estimating residual urine is faster than urethral catheterization, carries a lower risk of infection, costs less, and is more comfortable for patients.

“Our research showed that hospital staff needed an ultrasound bladder scanner that was highly portable, easy to use, and cost-effective,” recalls Svein Wognild, Chairman, Vitacon. “We decided to apply the latest technology to develop a device that could automatically calculate

and display the urine volume in a given patient’s bladder.”

The product development had several technical requirements. The device had to be small, reliable, and have high-speed wireless connectivity. To ensure the accuracy of bladder screenings, hospitals needed an easy way to train their staff in the use of the

device and how to interpret the results. Finally, the device had to support nine different languages for global markets: English, Chinese, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish.

SolutionSeeking to bolster its limited internal development resources, Vitacon turned to L&T Integrated Engineering Services (IES), a leader in the engineering services industry and Gold-level Windows Embedded Partner. Vitacon gave L&T IES a tight 12-month development deadline for hardware, software, and mechanical engineering.

VitaScan Ultrasound Bladder Monitor

L&T chose Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R2 as the operating system. “We knew Windows Embedded CE would provide us with a flexible and scalable and reliable architecture,” states Somshekhar Umadi, Senior Manager, L&T IES. “The operating system’s breadth of features allowed us to build a solution that fulfilled our customer’s quality requirements in record time.”

The complete solution is packaged with a smart device application developed using Microsoft Foundation Class (MFC) Framework 8.0 as part of Visual Studio 2005. Windows Embedded CE’s built-in multilingual support was critical to L&T IES making its final development deadline.

“Without the multilingual capabilities of Windows Embedded, it would have taken approximately 100 or more person-days of extra effort to translate the device software into nine languages,” explains Umadi.

The final result is the VitaScan Ultrasound Bladder Monitor, a portable system that provides real-time bladder scanning for a safe, easy, and non-invasive method to measure urinary bladder volume.

The device’s intuitive user interface is based on MFC Framework 8.0. Hospital staff can access the menus of the VitaScan Ultrasound Bladder Monitor (VitaScan Portable) either through the device’s touch screen or by plugging a mouse into one of its USB ports.

The VitaScan Portable has a built-in thermal printer, enabling users to print out a patient’s scanned image data for reference. Medical staff can also connect any PCL compatible printer to one of the device’s USB ports to print the patient records in larger format.

BenefitsIn addition to having accelerated the development cycle for L&T IES, the use of Windows Embedded CE 6.0 in the VitaScan Portable delivers several important technical and business benefits to Vitacon’s customers.

The support for high-capacity non-volatile data storage provides the option to save scanned image records for up to 500 patients. Medical professionals save patient details (e.g., patient name, hospital ID, age, gender, urinary volume measured, and scanned bladder images) using built-in software, which requires less time for managing files and paperwork.

“We estimate that the VitaScan Portable increases a hospital worker’s efficiency by 50 percent compared to manual paper-based processes,” claims Wognild. “A paperwork process that formerly took two to three minutes to perform can now be completed in less than one minute.”

He continued: “The many components included in Windows Embedded CE 6.0 enabled us to develop an intuitive and attractive application for medical professionals. The application makes it simple for them to generate reports and create histogram patterns of measured volume to help in diagnosis.”

Data is transferred wirelessly over Bluetooth providing an efficient way to back-up patient records to a single centralized server in a hospital with minimal user involvement. Medical technicians can also connect any USB-compatible mass storage device to transfer stored patient records from VitaScan.

Training hospital staff was made easier with Windows Embedded 6.0 as well. To address the requirement for fast training on how to operate the device, the VitaScan Portable has an on-board Demo Mode that utilizes the DirectDraw feature of Windows Embedded CE 6.0 to play a video tutorial.

“Windows Embedded provided an important bridge to the world of desktop PCs,” concludes Wognild. “Windows Embedded CE allowed us to create a separate PC program that lets physicians operate the VitaScan Portable from their laptop computer via USB. The doctors gain the benefits of a larger screen ‘real estate’ view and the productivity gains of using their own computer.”

Keywords: Medical Devices

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published November 2010

“Without the multilingual capabilities of Windows Embedded, it would have taken approximately 100 or more person-days of extra effort to translate the device software into nine languages.”Somshekhar Umadi, Senior Manager, L&T Integrated Engineering Services