Medical motherboards are starting to become available in volume production, which means that sourcing and configuration is becoming easier and more convenient. Extra add-on cards for custom board designs may not be needed to obtain galvanic isolated Gigabit Ethernet interfaces and EN13485-compliant manufacturing documentation.

Kontron’s first medical motherboard targets graphics and processing intensive medical applications found in nearly all healthcare environments ranging from diagnostic work stations through to computers in operating theatres, at nursing stations and in consulting rooms, right up to bedside applications. Such systems are often connected to PACS or other hospital information systems (HIS). In OEM equipment this motherboard will be deployed as a back-end processing block and as a GUI controller for a variety of medical devices including stationary and semi-mobile ultrasound scanners, MRI and CT.

By making available a dedicated medical motherboard manufactured in series production, which features EN 60601-1 compliant LAN, Kontron is opening up new sales channels. OEMs and Hospital IT departments can now order small quantities to manage the computer equipment connected to the medical device grids on their own. The medical motherboard is tailored to medical OEMs but also for the huge market of medical PCs that are deployed directly by IT specialists in hospitals, rehab and medical centers. Medical OEMs, VARs and medical end users will all benefit from the broader customer base, improved support and better economies of scale.

The standard Flex-ATX board has two EN60601-1 compliant isolated Ethernet ports. The Kontron KTQ67/Flex-MED offers a long-term availability of 7 years and in addition to the isolated LANs, includes 2 DVI interfaces to drive medical imaging tasks on two HD monitors. The performance is scalable across the range of the dual core and quad core desktop CPUs from Intel´s® 3rd generation Core™ processors, making it easy to tailor the motherboard to a broad range of individual performance needs.

Kontron
www.kontron.com