An innovative startup company took on the challenge of radically redesigning the operating room and bringing operational efficiency to new levels. An important element is the integration of a range of medical devices into a central user and control interface thus freeing surgeons from directly controlling the devices.

Zühlke Engineering is responsible for the system design and implementation of the operating room integration. In this interdisciplinary project, various disciplines such as electronics, embedded software and mechanical engineering work together to turn innovation into reality.

This presentation gives an introduction to the basic concept behind the operating room integration and outlines the challenges that were faced during development.

Zühlke office hosts an ice-cream fridge, with payment system being a ceramic bowl where employees would leave appropriate amount of money for the ice-creams that they take. Employees are responsible for calculating the total sum, as well as paying this amount into the bowl. We wanted to make this process more automated and less prone to errors.

Proposed solution

A touch-screen device, with attached fingerprint scanner and barcode scanner. Buyer could use touchscreen or barcode scanner for filling the basket; the act of buying is achieved either by scanning your finger, or by entering your username and pin via touchscreen. The budget for the ice-creams would be tied to the FOA (Food Ordering Application), so that employees could use one internal money account for all the food-related products and services.

Prototype

BeagleBone Black with Linux, Qt5, QML GUI and SQLite database. Fingerprint scanner is connected to the serial port, and barcode scanner is connected to the USB port.

Challenges