Advantech's AI-Powered Systems Boost ICU Patient Care and Safety
12/25/2024
Background
With an aging population and rising chronic disease cases, ICU admissions are increasing, requiring hospitals to expand bed capacity. However, staffing shortages persist, as the nursing workforce cannot grow in tandem with ICU demands. To address this challenge, a leading medical equipment manufacturer has enhanced its intensive care solutions by integrating Advantech’s POC-4 series medical all-in-one machines, USM-100H edge AI workstations, and PAX-1 medical touch displays. This next-generation patient monitoring system automates physiological data tracking and provides real-time alerts, reducing the workload on nursing staff while ensuring patient safety and maintaining high-quality care.
Product Upgrade Plan: Starting with Hardware Replacement
A leading medical equipment manufacturer, with over a century in the healthcare industry and a global workforce of 50,000, provides a wide range of medical devices, including X-ray machines, CT scanners, and ventilators. Their self-developed physiological monitors, placed bedside in ICUs, continuously track patients’ heart rates, respiration, blood pressure, and blood oxygen saturation. To streamline monitoring, they introduced a central workstation that collects data from multiple monitors, issuing alerts for abnormalities and notifying healthcare personnel—reducing unnecessary nurse visits while ensuring prompt responses. As the manufacturer expanded software functions, they recognized that their existing hardware was nearing the end of its lifecycle, prompting a search for new suppliers to enhance system stability and performance.
Three Key Advantages of Advantech
When designing the next-generation patient monitoring workstation, the manufacturer required two flexible hardware architectures: an all-in-one machine (screen and host combined) and a computer terminal paired with a monitor. They initially commissioned an OEM for new hardware but encountered high costs and extended development timelines, including FDA certification and mold creation, which would take at least two years. Seeking an efficient and cost-effective solution, they chose Advantech for three critical reasons:- Stable Operation – Pre-certified medical-grade hardware ensures reliability in critical care environments.
- lModular Design – Advantech’s POC-4 all-in-one machines, USM-100 AI workstations, and PAX-1 displays share common modules, simplifying maintenance and integration.
- Cost and Time Efficiency – Advantech delivers quick, customized modifications (e.g., casing colors, I/O adjustments), enabling rapid software-hardware integration while reducing development costs and time-to-market.
According to Advantech Product Manager CH Wang, the company's ability to provide certified, adaptable, and ready-to-integrate hardware made it the ideal choice for the manufacturer’s upgraded patient monitoring system.
Improving Customer Trust Through Proactive Service: Assisting with Software-Hardware Integration Issues
Along with improved product offerings, Advantech established a dedicated team to assist with software-hardware integration for the medical equipment manufacturer. CH Wang noted that Advantech’s extensive healthcare experience allowed them to anticipate future integration challenges when upgrading hardware during software enhancements. To address this, a specialized project team—including EE engineers, mechanical engineers, and account managers—was formed to support clients.
For instance, an upgrade project was led by a software team in India, where communication barriers initially caused difficulties. Early testing flagged critical issues, such as slow CPU speeds and overheating. To resolve them, Advantech’s team traveled to India to identify the root cause, incorrect parameter settings inherited from existing legacy hardware. By refining settings for CPU temperature, speed, voltage, and current, the team overcame integration challenges, strengthening collaboration and confidence between Advantech and the local team in India.
Advantech’s proactive approach extended to reliability testing, where they ran 30 machines under 24-hour high-stress conditions for six months to identify potential issues before deployment in medical settings. Currently, Advantech collaborates with this manufacturer across subsidiaries in the U.S. and Europe, aiming to expand their healthcare solutions and enhance the stability and quality of medical devices industry-wide.
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