Ada in medical devices

Ada in medical devices

[Jerry]

From this link:
"FDA: Software Failures Responsible for 24% Of All Medical Device
Recalls"
https://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/fda-software-failures-responsible-24-all-medical-device-recalls-062012

(FDA = United States Food and Drug Administration)

From the article:

"Some defects were basic violations of software coding practices while
others were new defects that were introduced during correction of the
previous defects."

and:

"The statement is the clearest indication to date that FDA is shifting
focus to make software quality an area of interest. The agency has
come under fire in recent years for not holding manufacturers'
accountable for insecure or poorly written software. There is growing
evidence that software security and integrity is a growing problem in
the medical field."

How much is Ada used in medical devices? Is this an opportunity for
Ada?

Jerry

Re: Ada in medical devices

[Jeffrey Carter]

On 06/21/2012 03:12 PM, Jerry wrote:
>
> How much is Ada used in medical devices? Is this an opportunity for
> Ada?

I don't know. It should be an opportunity.

I once knew a C coder, and a mediocre C coder at that, who was coding for 
pacemakers. I hope I never need one.

-- 
Jeff Carter
"Death awaits you all, with nasty, big, pointy teeth!"
Monty Python & the Holy Grail
20

--- Posted via news://freenews.netfront.net/ - Complaints to news@netfront.net ---

Re: Ada in medical devices

[Nasser M. Abbasi]

On 6/21/2012 5:12 PM, Jerry wrote:

>
> How much is Ada used in medical devices? Is this an opportunity for
> Ada?
>
> Jerry

Too late, as I am sure the medical devices software is
being re-written now using HTML5 and JavaScript!

Last I heard is that Amazon can't keep enough HTML5 and JavaScript
books in stock. They are flying off the shelves faster than they
can stock them.

btw, I remember there was a person on this news group in the 90's who
was very big into Ada being in medical devices who used to post here
alot. I think he owned a small company that did some work for Ada
and medical devices, I forgot his name. I remember he was a PhD person
and from California/San Diego I think. That is all. He would have
been interested in this subject.

--Nasser



  

Re: Ada in medical devices

[John B. Matthews]

In article <js07pa$utl$1@speranza.aioe.org>,
 "Nasser M. Abbasi" <nma@12000.org> wrote:

> On 6/21/2012 5:12 PM, Jerry wrote:
>
> > How much is Ada used in medical devices? Is this an opportunity for 
> > Ada?
> 
> Too late, as I am sure the medical devices software is being 
> re-written now using HTML5 and JavaScript!
> 
> Last I heard is that Amazon can't keep enough HTML5 and JavaScript 
> books in stock. They are flying off the shelves faster than they can 
> stock them.
> 
> btw, I remember there was a person on this news group in the 90's who 
> was very big into Ada being in medical devices who used to post here 
> alot. I think he owned a small company that did some work for Ada and 
> medical devices, I forgot his name. I remember he was a PhD person 
> and from California/San Diego I think. That is all. He would have 
> been interested in this subject.

Larry Kilgallen, LJK Software. Sadly, no longer with us:

<https://groups.google.com/d/topic/comp.os.vms/yGXs1ZbZWx0/discussion>

-- 
John B. Matthews
trashgod at gmail dot com
<http://sites.google.com/site/drjohnbmatthews>

Re: Ada in medical devices

[Patrick]

Hi Jerry

I work with scientific instruments. Most of my customers are university researchers but some are hospitals. Many instruments can double duty between chemical and biological testing.

I don't know too much but I can say a few things..

Jeol makes NMR units, Nuclear Magnetic Spectrometers. They are featured in one of Adacores videos and can be found on youtube. These instruments are Ada based.

Beckman-Coulter is or was using Ada.

Teledyne ISCO is using RTEMS. It could be with just C but I'm guessing it might be with Ada.

Many of the instruments I have worked with are based on MC68K or similar CPUs and I have seen very few microcontroller based instruments, usually the RAM/ROM is external.

I haven't spent much time trying to disassemble other peoples firmware but there is a very expensive interface card(>$10K) that I carry out repairs on. I've poked around in the firmware looking for clues as I have to repair them without schematics and need all the help I can get.

There are clues that some sort of IDE is being used like CodeWarrior and that would make me suspect firmware written in C. Some of the firmware I have looked at had comments intact at the end of the binary and in fact this is the only usefully information I have been able to recover.

I have spent quite a bit of time using various desktop software to control scientific instruments and I seriously doubt that it is written in Ada, most of it is buggy crap.

After nearly 14 years of repairing other peoples stuff I am considering building my own instruments and this is the prime reason why I am interested in Ada right now.

I would love to hear back about any information about Ada being used with scientific instrumentation.

Thanks-Patrick

Re: Ada in medical devices

[tmoran]

> btw, I remember there was a person on this news group in the 90's who
> was very big into Ada being in medical devices who used to post here
> alot. I think he owned a small company that did some work for Ada
> and medical devices, I forgot his name. I remember he was a PhD person
> and from California/San Diego I think. That is all. He would have
> been interested in this subject.

Robert C. Leif, Newport Instruments.  Hasn't posted in comp.lang.ada
for some time now, but Google shows a 2007 paper on using XML to
medical interface instrumentation.

Re: Ada in medical devices

[Nasser M. Abbasi]

On 6/21/2012 11:04 PM, tmoran@acm.org wrote:
>> btw, I remember there was a person on this news group in the 90's who
>> was very big into Ada being in medical devices who used to post here
>> alot. I think he owned a small company that did some work for Ada
>> and medical devices, I forgot his name. I remember he was a PhD person
>> and from California/San Diego I think. That is all. He would have
>> been interested in this subject.
>
> Robert C. Leif, Newport Instruments.  Hasn't posted in comp.lang.ada
> for some time now, but Google shows a 2007 paper on using XML to
> medical interface instrumentation.
>

Thanks, yes that is him. He once mailed me lots of reports and papers
on Ada/medical devices. I think I still have them somewhere.  

Here is a paper for him on Ada in medical software

On is page below you'll find link to paper called

"Ada in Embedded Boards for Scientific and Medical Instruments"

http://www.newportinstruments.com/ada_med/ada_med.htm

good to see he is still around.

--Nasser

Re: Ada in medical devices

[Jerry Petrey]

On 6/21/2012 3:37 PM, Jeffrey Carter wrote:
>
> I once knew a C coder, and a mediocre C coder at that, who was coding
> for pacemakers. I hope I never need one.


Hi Jeffrey,

How true.  Remember the Therac-25 incident in the 1980's where C pointer 
problems killed a number of people with huge doses of X-rays?

Jerry

Re: Ada in medical devices

[RasikaSrinivasan]

On Tuesday, June 26, 2012 6:58:04 PM UTC-4, Jerry wrote:
> On 6/21/2012 3:37 PM, Jeffrey Carter wrote:
> >
> > I once knew a C coder, and a mediocre C coder at that, who was coding
> > for pacemakers. I hope I never need one.
> 
> 
> Hi Jeffrey,
> 
> How true.  Remember the Therac-25 incident in the 1980's where C pointer 
> problems killed a number of people with huge doses of X-rays?
> 
> Jerry

I develop medical devices.

If Ada has to take root in this world (at least mine), some requirements:
- variety of embedded baremetal targets - ARM, AVR, MSP
- a very easy to use package of software + eval boards + variety of examples. Examples interfacing with standard peripherals - ADC, PWM, SPI etc.
- debugging support.

a bundle around Arduino for example would be a good first step.

This will make it easy to get engineers to try Ada out.

yes. all this can be assembled - but it takes quit a bit of persistence.

If anyone is interested in collaborating on such an effort, I would welcome an opportunity.

Cheers, srini

Re: Ada in medical devices

[Ian Clifton]

Jerry Petrey <gpetrey@earthlink.net> writes:

> On 6/21/2012 3:37 PM, Jeffrey Carter wrote:
>>
>> I once knew a C coder, and a mediocre C coder at that, who was coding
>> for pacemakers. I hope I never need one.
> How true.  Remember the Therac-25 incident in the 1980's where C
> pointer problems killed a number of people with huge doses of X-rays?
>
To be fair, I believe the Therac-25 software was written in PDB-11
assembler:

http://sunnyday.mit.edu/papers/therac.pdf page 23

-- 
Ian ◎

Re: Ada in medical devices

[Dmitry A. Kazakov]

On Wed, 27 Jun 2012 11:10:17 +0100, Ian Clifton wrote:

> Jerry Petrey <gpetrey@earthlink.net> writes:
> 
>> On 6/21/2012 3:37 PM, Jeffrey Carter wrote:
>>>
>>> I once knew a C coder, and a mediocre C coder at that, who was coding
>>> for pacemakers. I hope I never need one.
>> How true.  Remember the Therac-25 incident in the 1980's where C
>> pointer problems killed a number of people with huge doses of X-rays?
>>
> To be fair, I believe the Therac-25 software was written in PDB-11
> assembler:
> 
> http://sunnyday.mit.edu/papers/therac.pdf page 23

MACRO-11 was a higher level language than C, almost serious. (:-))

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de

Re: Ada in medical devices

[Jeffrey Carter]

On 06/27/2012 02:56 AM, RasikaSrinivasan@gmail.com wrote:
>
> I develop medical devices.
>
> If Ada has to take root in this world (at least mine), some requirements:
> - variety of embedded baremetal targets - ARM, AVR, MSP
> - a very easy to use package of software + eval boards + variety of examples. Examples interfacing with standard peripherals - ADC, PWM, SPI etc.
> - debugging support.
>
> a bundle around Arduino for example would be a good first step.
>
> This will make it easy to get engineers to try Ada out.
>
> yes. all this can be assembled - but it takes quit a bit of persistence.

I presume all this should also be free?

Considering the huge liabilities a medical-device vendor faces if the device 
kills people, I'd think you'd be willing to pay to have all this, probably with 
SPARK support as well. I'm sure there are several vendors who'd be happy to 
provide you with everything you want for an appropriate fee.

This seems like a perfect example of a situation where saving a few bucks now 
costs you a whole lot more later.

-- 
Jeff Carter
"Whatever it is, I'm against it."
Horse Feathers
46



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Re: Ada in medical devices

[RasikaSrinivasan]

On Wednesday, June 27, 2012 1:39:06 PM UTC-4, Jeffrey Carter wrote:
> On 06/27/2012 02:56 AM, RasikaSrinivasan@gmail.com wrote:
> >
> > I develop medical devices.
> >
> > If Ada has to take root in this world (at least mine), some requirements:
> > - variety of embedded baremetal targets - ARM, AVR, MSP
> > - a very easy to use package of software + eval boards + variety of examples. Examples interfacing with standard peripherals - ADC, PWM, SPI etc.
> > - debugging support.
> >
> > a bundle around Arduino for example would be a good first step.
> >
> > This will make it easy to get engineers to try Ada out.
> >
> > yes. all this can be assembled - but it takes quit a bit of persistence.
> 
> I presume all this should also be free?
> 
> Considering the huge liabilities a medical-device vendor faces if the device 
> kills people, I'd think you'd be willing to pay to have all this, probably with 
> SPARK support as well. I'm sure there are several vendors who'd be happy to 
> provide you with everything you want for an appropriate fee.
> 
> This seems like a perfect example of a situation where saving a few bucks now 
> costs you a whole lot more later.
> 
> -- 
> Jeff Carter
> "Whatever it is, I'm against it."
> Horse Feathers
> 46
> 
> 
> 
> --- Posted via news://freenews.netfront.net/ - Complaints to news@netfront.net ---

it is one thing to build a device and something else entirely to induce the engineers to investigate a radically different path from the current ones. 

anyhow, enough said. srini

Re: Ada in medical devices

[Jerry Petrey]

On 6/27/2012 3:10 AM, Ian Clifton wrote:
> Jerry Petrey <gpetrey@earthlink.net> writes:
>
>> On 6/21/2012 3:37 PM, Jeffrey Carter wrote:
>>>
>>> I once knew a C coder, and a mediocre C coder at that, who was coding
>>> for pacemakers. I hope I never need one.
>> How true.  Remember the Therac-25 incident in the 1980's where C
>> pointer problems killed a number of people with huge doses of X-rays?
>>
> To be fair, I believe the Therac-25 software was written in PDB-11
> assembler:
>
> http://sunnyday.mit.edu/papers/therac.pdf page 23
>


You are right.  It was written in PDP-11 assembly language - I 
remembered incorrectly.  Nancy Leveson has an excellent coverage of the 
Therac-25 accident in her book "Safeware: System Safety and Computers".
The problems were caused by coding errors and improper reuse attempts by 
trying to reuse some of the Therac-6 and Therac-20 code in the newer 
Therac-25.  It was a very sad outcome.

Jerry

Re: Ada in medical devices

[leonid.dulman]

On Friday, June 22, 2012 12:12:39 AM UTC+2, Jerry wrote:
> From this link:
> "FDA: Software Failures Responsible for 24% Of All Medical Device
> Recalls"
> https://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/fda-software-failures-responsible-24-all-medical-device-recalls-062012
> 
> (FDA = United States Food and Drug Administration)
> 
> From the article:
> 
> "Some defects were basic violations of software coding practices while
> others were new defects that were introduced during correction of the
> previous defects."
> 
> and:
> 
> "The statement is the clearest indication to date that FDA is shifting
> focus to make software quality an area of interest. The agency has
> come under fire in recent years for not holding manufacturers'
> accountable for insecure or poorly written software. There is growing
> evidence that software security and integrity is a growing problem in
> the medical field."
> 
> How much is Ada used in medical devices? Is this an opportunity for
> Ada?
> 
> Jerry

VTKADA is support all medical formats and can be used in software for medical devices