Where would you like to see NI go in the life sciences?

[Steve.J]

National Instruments has enjoyed a great deal of success working with the life sciences community over the years.  From simply providing a high performance and open instrument control solution for automating multiple instruments and peripherals (GPIB) to high-accuracy and cost-effective measurement boards for chromatography or datalogging (DAQ).  More recently, our FPGA and real-time embedded control products have been instrumental in the development of novel medical devices for cancer treatment and diagnostic applications.  NI's high-performance and flexible I/O hardware coupled to the graphical programming and signal processing strengths of LabVIEW have made for a very natural application of these tools to the life and analytical sciences.  However, none of the hardware or software was expressly designed for this community or these applications.  Our vision products (frame grabbers, image processing and analysis software, etc. were really designed primarily for industrial imaging applications, but they have proven to be very powerful when applied to cellular imaging as well.  Our PXI platform was really designed as a powerful and flexible automated electronics test platform - but it is currently used in a number of amazing biomedical applications including a magnetoencephalographic (MEG) system and commercial CT imaging system.

So...what if we were to design functions, features, or whole products for the biomedical industry?  Are we missing key features or functionality that could further accelerate innovation in the life sciences, whether it be basic research, early functional prototypes of novel new systems, or rapid commercialization of proven ideas?  I'd like to hear your ideas!

Steve

[aart]

I just found out that you have/had a product called bio bench.  I was asked to look into buying it but the NI website said that the last order for that product was April 30th of this year.  They should have kept it for a year more to see if this group could promote it especially now that NI is taking on more of an interest in the medical industry.  Just a thought.

Eric

[Newton_de_Faria]

Eric,

Biobench was a good product, that has a good fit for a small universe of applications.

Because of the evolution of our hardware and software platform and the goal of providing a more open development environment we have created the Biomedical Start-up Kit ( http://decibel.ni.com/content/docs/DOC-4751 ).

The intention is to provide an evolving platform with the Worbench flavor for the application like needs and the LabVIEW building blocks for the programmers/developers.

Currently we have implemented features like file format converters (including WFDB ), logger, ECG feature extraction, Heart rate variability, NIPB, etc..

Check it out, give us your feedback, help us add to it, and as you affered, promote it.

Newton

[Steve.J]

As Newton says, the BioBench product was too "closed" for our research community and not easily extensible to our newer hardware.  For a simple and powerful data logger to quickly start acquiring and saving data to disk we now have Signal Express, which is much more powerful than BioBench and can easily be supplemented with signal processing features.  The Biomedical Start-up Kit is a good example of what can be done with LabVIEW when it is applied to ECG analysis and other common tasks.  We are looking at ways to make this new kit more "open source" so that the community can build on it.  We are also looking at ways to gather and share biomedical LabVIEW code in some sort of an on-line VI library.  For now, the Wiki (or "Documents" section) of this Biomedical User Group can function as a place to post useful LabVIEW code where everyone can share, comment, etc.

Thanks for the input - keep it coming!

Steve

[aart]

Thanks for the insight Newton and Steve,

It is nice to know that there is something else that you guys have that can work even better.  I totally forgot about Signal Express. I will also take a look at the Bio kit and see if I can contribute to it.   Thanks again

Eric

[Coq_Rouge]

The Biobench solution is quite outdated and has been so for many years now. I think it is good idea to retire it. I am suprised it has not been done a long time ago. In my experience the largest obstacle then doing measurement in life science, is not software but the hardware. Then doing life science measurement on real patients the measurement system has to comply with IEC 60601-1 or some other equivalent national standard like the UL2601-1. So a reasonable priced IEC60601-1 compatible and Labview compatible measurement system would have been nice. But I emphasize on the term reasonable priced. Then I am doing life science measurement I often use a Laptop with a medical grade power supply. Then I use standard NI DAQ hardware. I Mounting everything in a proper enclosure is also important. All cables going in or out must be proper secured. You can not use a lab bench approach in this environment. The reason for this is that the system has to be approved by the locale medical technical department. If the system look like something made by a hobbyist, they will never allow you to use the equipment in a medical environment. Then it comes to the software I prefer to not use turnkey ready software. It will never do 100% what you want it to do. It is better to make a software tailoremade for the setting. And it is not so hard.

Another cool device I will mention is this gadget here http://www.opticis.com/english/02_product/product03_01.htm It is a cheap fiber optic extender. It may help you to isolate your PC from other equipment. I used it once with a Daqpad unit. BUT remember it do not support USB 2.0. It will work but you will get lower maximum data rate. If you plan to use it ensure it will support your DAQPad 

[Steve.J]

We agree that the hardware is an important gap in our ability to expand our business in the life sciences. The challenges in developing, marketing, and supporting (including the applications support) a true medical grade data acquisition system are significant.  To date, we have relied on the fact that our general purpose data acquisition systems are compatible with most medical-grade amplifiers/signal-conditioning systems, but this does create a challenge for our customers to "build their own" systems.  Going forward, we hope to identify some partners in this industry that are willing to create a more integrated solution between their hardware and our software - most importantly LabVIEW.  There is a nice opportunity for companies in this area to leverage our LabVIEW community and our world-wide sales reach!  This is an area that I am currently actively driving - watch for developments in this area.