Three trends are driving a dramatic increase in the number
and diversity of remote-care medical devices entering the
market: aging populations in industrialized countries,
pressures on private and public healthcare providers and
insurers to reduce health care costs, and a new focus on
primary and secondary care. For example, in the U.S. alone,
sales of remote-care devices are expected to double to $1.3
billion in 2011.
This paper is about choosing an embedded OS for remote-
care medical devices — or indeed any system where
reliability, recovery and safety are critical differentiators. It
provides a high-level “shopping list” of requirements that
device manufacturers can use to evaluate OSs they are
considering for their remote-care medical devices.