Biosend, an automated biomedical acquisition system

Abstract

A virtual instrument to acquire automatically biomedical signals is introduced. The system is constituted by two basic blocks: a hardware unit or concentrator that gathers and sends back all the information shown by the several screens connected to the patient, regardless of their trade-mark, through a single channel series digital standard R3-232 or EIA-422 to a distant computer, in such a way that any additional hardware is superfluous. Secondly, a software subsystem installed in a central computer that permits one to capture, visualize and process all the information from a patient, thus, facilitating the control of such patient, also, making it possible to extract data and statistics that are extremely valuable in medical investigation. This software can be run in a PC or Macintosh environment and it has been designed through LABVIEW 3.1 by National Instruments, a graphic programming language used in the development of automated instrumentation systems.