Medical Device Operating System

Safety certification is a huge burden–and a nearly insurmountable challenge if you use software of unknown provenance (SOUP) such as Linux®. Additionally, medical devices need to boot up quickly, should never crash and be sure to run the highest priority applications first. By using a commercial OS pre-certified to industry standards, you can significantly reduce the complexities, costs and durations of your certification processes.

QNX® OS for Safety is certified by TÜV Rheinland for use in applications requiring IEC 62304 compliance up to Class C. BlackBerry QNX solutions are built to help satisfy the safety requirements of medical systems.

Failure is not an option for a life-saving medical device. In an open source or monolithic kernel OS, failure of a driver or application can crash an entire system. And without the ability to schedule or prioritize critical functions, a system crash could create a life-threatening situation.

The BlackBerry QNX microkernel OS architecture provides temporal and spatial isolation such as adaptive partitioning to ensure system reliability. It forms the foundation of the QNX® Neutrino® RTOS as well as the QNX® Hypervisor which allows you to consolidate multiple operating systems on a single system on a chip (SoC) while protecting safety-critical systems.

While Linux is popular for prototypes, compliance with IEC 62304 is difficult and costly with an open-source operating system. All BlackBerry QNX products are POSIX-compliant, so you can easily port to a QNX OS at any point in your software development lifecycle. Alternatively, you can run diverse OSs on an SoC with the QNX Hypervisor.

The QNX® Software Development Platform (SDP) looks and feels like Linux. It employs the familiar Eclipse development environment including the GNU compiler collection. BlackBerry QNX also offers board support packages, porting assessments and engineering services to help you get to market sooner.

The breach of a medical device or communications can put lives at risk, so cybersecurity needs to be built-in across your entire system—including your OS. Your medical device may also need to operate successfully on an IEC 80001-conformant healthcare IT network.

The unique microkernel architecture of the QNX Neutrino RTOS provides a layered approach to cybersecurity. With more than 70 options to restrict processes and root-level access removed by default, the QNX OS won’t hamper system functionality or performance. We also offer solutions to uncover software vulnerabilities (even in third-party components) and security services to help every step of the way.

If your organization has multiple product lines, maintaining so-called free open-source OSs for each can be costly, and could monopolize developer time better spent on innovation and new features. Choosing the right commercial microkernel OS can reduce that burden, enabling you to scale more easily by reusing application and driver codes across devices and to deliver new product introductions faster.

BlackBerry QNX provides experienced product support and we ensure all security patches and updates are extensively tested. When you use the QNX Neutrino RTOS, you can offload OS maintenance to BlackBerry QNX. Plus, with POSIX-based products, switching to BlackBerry QNX is a small technical lift.