GUI design tool simplifies medical device development

Using GUIX Studio, developers and designers can execute a complete UI application on a PC, quickly and easily generating and demonstrating UI concepts and test screen flows in order to observe screen transitions and animations. With GUIX Studio, the designer can select, drag and drop, and resize images, backgrounds, widgets, and other elements of a powerful GUI without having to write a single line of code. GUIX Studio generates the code necessary to implement the exact GUI design created on the PC. When completed, the same code can be compiled and linked with the GUIX and ThreadX runtime target libraries as part of a project.

“The performance enhancements in modern devices lead customers to expect correspondingly better graphics capabilities and display resolution for next-generation applications,” said Ritesh Tyagi, vice president of marketing, Renesas Electronics America, Inc. “The Express Logic GUIX tools used with our powerful RZ/A series microprocessors let developers more quickly and easily access sophisticated GUIS to enhance the end-user visual experience especially for medical and human-machine-interface applications.”

Developers can produce prerendered fonts for their applications using integrated font generation in GUIX Studio. Fonts can be generated in monochrome or antialiased formats that are compressed to save space on the target. Fonts can include any set of characters, including Unicode characters for multilingual applications. Importing graphics from PNG or JPG files and converting them to compressed GUIX pixelmaps for the target system is another integrated feature of GUIX Studio, and many of the GUIX widget types are designed to incorporate developers’ proprietary graphics for a custom look and feel. In addition, developers can customize default colors and drawing styles used by the standard GUIX widgets. GUIX Studio also generates and maintains application strings for any number of target languages.

“As an integral part of any human-operated medical device, considerations of how GUIs are designed is a key component of its safety, efficacy, and ultimate success, whether it be for patient monitoring, dialysis, ultrasound, or other applications,” noted Dr. Jerry Krasner, Principal Analyst of Embedded Market Forecasters (EMF). “Medical development teams need the ability to prototype and test the GUI with end-user input to ensure that the product will be effective and that its operations and interpretations are clear and easy to use. Express Logic’s GUIX Studio makes the design, development, and test process easy.”

GUIX Studio is available for Windows 7 and Windows 8 PCs. GUIX and GUIX Studio are licensed together at prices starting at $12,500.