Medical instruments don't use Ada

Medical instruments don't use Ada

[Justin Gombos]

A technical recruiter for the medical devices industry told me a few
months ago he had never even heard of Ada.  He's been recruiting in
the medical industry for 25 years.  He operates near the west coast of
the U.S.  I was curious if you folks knew of any Ada driven medical
devices - and in what country such development takes place.

-- 
PM instructions: do a C4esar Ciph3r on my address; retain punctuation.

Re: Medical instruments don't use Ada

[Niklas Holsti]

Justin Gombos wrote:
> A technical recruiter for the medical devices industry told me a few
> months ago he had never even heard of Ada.  He's been recruiting in
> the medical industry for 25 years.  He operates near the west coast of
> the U.S.  I was curious if you folks knew of any Ada driven medical
> devices - and in what country such development takes place.

This company works with Ada for medical laboratory instruments:

    http://www.newportinstruments.com/

Medical devices like implants or patient monitors would of course be 
more critical systems. I haven't heard of Ada used in such devices.

-- 
Niklas Holsti
Tidorum Ltd
niklas holsti tidorum fi
       .      @       .

Re: Medical instruments don't use Ada

[adaworks]

"Justin Gombos" <rpbkbq.xax.gld@uluv.kbq> wrote in message 
news:l2VWh.4409$0d2.1330@trndny02...
>A technical recruiter for the medical devices industry told me a few
> months ago he had never even heard of Ada.  He's been recruiting in
> the medical industry for 25 years.  He operates near the west coast of
> the U.S.  I was curious if you folks knew of any Ada driven medical
> devices - and in what country such development takes place.
>
I used to know a guy who had a small company specializing in the
creation of software for medical instruments on microcontrollers.
For the most part these were computers such as the I-8051, eight
bit micros that had very little primary memory, and did a small number
of functions.  In this environment, Ada may not be the best alternative.
In fact, this man, and his other programmers, used Assembler for most
of their programming.

For his group, C was not used much, and C++ was pretty much out of
the question.   Java was nowhere to be seen.

I have not been in contact with him for about twelve years, but I do know
that I-8501 and similar microcontrollers are still used in a lot of 
single-purpose
systems, including medical equipment.    They are really cheap to use in mass
produced equipment.

There was a correspondent in this forum about ten years ago who was
exploring the potential for Ada in those kinds of systems.  I don't think
he got very far.  Also, there are no compilers in place to support the
kinds of processors used in microcontroller medical systems.

Richard Riehle 

Re: Medical instruments don't use Ada

[Georg Bauhaus]

On Mon, 2007-04-23 at 08:07 +0300, Niklas Holsti wrote:

> This company works with Ada for medical laboratory instruments:
> 
>     http://www.newportinstruments.com/
> 
> Medical devices like implants or patient monitors would of course be 
> more critical systems. I haven't heard of Ada used in such devices.
> 

Or http://www.ada-med.com/
Perhaps Dr Leif has more information

Re: Medical instruments don't use Ada

[Jean-Pierre Rosen]

Justin Gombos a �crit :
> A technical recruiter for the medical devices industry told me a few
> months ago he had never even heard of Ada.  He's been recruiting in
> the medical industry for 25 years.  He operates near the west coast of
> the U.S.  I was curious if you folks knew of any Ada driven medical
> devices - and in what country such development takes place.
> 
I once consulted for ultrasound system used for curing prostate that was 
developed in Ada.

-- 
---------------------------------------------------------
            J-P. Rosen (rosen@adalog.fr)
Visit Adalog's web site at http://www.adalog.fr

Re: Medical instruments don't use Ada

[Peter Hermann]

adaworks@sbcglobal.net wrote:
> There was a correspondent in this forum about ten years ago who was
> exploring the potential for Ada in those kinds of systems.  I don't think
> he got very far.  Also, there are no compilers in place to support the

no, I got not very far  ;-(

> kinds of processors used in microcontroller medical systems.

-- 
--Peter.Hermann@ihr.uni-stuttgart.de        (+49)0711-685-872-44(Fax79)
--Nobelstr.19 Raum 0.030, D-70569 Stuttgart IHR Hoechstleistungsrechnen
--http://www.ihr.uni-stuttgart.de/

Re: Medical instruments do use Ada

[Colin Paul Gloster]

In news:RgXWh.860$im2.282@newssvr22.news.prodigy.net timestamped Sun,
22 Apr 2007 22:14:37 -0800, Richard Riehle <adaworks@sbcglobal.net> posted:
"[..]
I used to know a guy who had a small company specializing in the
creation of software for medical instruments on microcontrollers.
For the most part these were computers such as the I-8051, eight
bit micros that had very little primary memory, and did a small number
of functions.  In this environment, Ada may not be the best alternative.
[..]

[..]

There was a correspondent in this forum about ten years ago who was
exploring the potential for Ada in those kinds of systems.  I don't think
he got very far.  Also, there are no compilers in place to support the
kinds of processors used in microcontroller medical systems."

It is not Ada, but...
WWW.DesignTools.co.NZ/mod51.htm

Possibly not Ada, but...
in news:eup71u$bd5$1@newsserver.cilea.it C. P. G. wrote:

"[..]

I do not know whether this is really true, but in the so-called 
Republic of Ireland I shockingly heard of one deployed (and not 
recalled) life-critical embedded medical software product which is 
very crash prone, but which is designed to have a very quick reboot 
time (far less than one second) such that it is expected that crashing 
does not make the product unsafe. The person who claimed this said 
that for his own work (business-critical but not life-critical and not 
medical), he similarly does not bother to design his software so well 
that it will not crash frequently, and that he tries to have data 
structures in such a way that they are resilient to corruption from crashes."

Re: Medical instruments do use Ada

[Michael Bode]

Colin Paul Gloster <Colin_Paul_Gloster@ACM.org> writes:

> The person who claimed this said that for his own work
> (business-critical but not life-critical and not medical), he
> similarly does not bother to design his software so well that it
> will not crash frequently, and that he tries to have data structures
> in such a way that they are resilient to corruption from crashes."

Maybe one could use crashing as a regular operation mode of the
program. Instead of raising an exception, write some data to the
registry, then dereference a null pointer and restart.

-- 
No intelligent man has any respect for an unjust law. 
He simply follows the eleventh commandment.
-- R.A. Heinlein

Re: Medical instruments do use Ada

[Markus E Leypold]

Michael Bode <m.g.bode@web.de> writes:

> Colin Paul Gloster <Colin_Paul_Gloster@ACM.org> writes:
>
>> The person who claimed this said that for his own work
>> (business-critical but not life-critical and not medical), he
>> similarly does not bother to design his software so well that it
>> will not crash frequently, and that he tries to have data structures
>> in such a way that they are resilient to corruption from crashes."
>
> Maybe one could use crashing as a regular operation mode of the
> program. Instead of raising an exception, write some data to the
> registry, then dereference a null pointer and restart.

Reminds me of

   http://shoestringfoundation.org/cgi-bin/blosxom.cgi/2005/11/11#unreliable.programming

   "Unreliable Programming: a method for evading liability claims on software."


Regards -- Markus