CANopen in hospital beds

Source: CAN Newsletter, December 2005

Several years ago a design team was assembled to develop a new communication protocol for future hospital bed needs. The existing internal serial protocol technology was based on a popular standard, but tailored to the extent that it was manufacturer-specific. Engineering staff required to maintain the protocol was increasing. Updates to the standard had to be manually controlled to implement new features. The development tools and hardware were expensive and the development environment was difficult to migrate to new Windows operating systems. Training new engineers on the software and tools required internal resources due to the customization. After years of evolving previous designs, this team was able to start from a clean sheet of paper. This was the start of a new communication platform.
Patients in hospital beds would be amazed if they knew about the number of electronic modules that are required to deliver premium care for patients and improve caregiver effectiveness. The hospital environment has a diverse set of requirements: from long term stay facilities, medium acuity (med-surge) general short-term stay to critical care. For each environment, the complexity and number of electronic modules can vary up to 20 independent microprocessors communicating together.