Nipro Diabetes Systems was established to develop, manufacture, and sell a line of lightweight, body-worn insulin pumps. When Nipro set out to design the embedded software inside the first-generation "Amigo A" product, engineering management knew the company would need the talents and hard work of engineers inside and outside the company. After experienced engineers had drafted the software architecture on paper, Nipro's engineering director turned to Netrino for an outside design review.

Independent advice

A senior firmware engineer from Netrino consulted with Nipro's experienced staff engineers and contract electronics designers. After reviewing the planned design for the insulin pump firmware, the Netrino consultant proposed a simpler, radically different approach to the high-level software architecture based on state machines.

Nipro's engineering director immediately recognized the value of changing the design to a state machine as proposed by Netrino. Netrino's consultant also identified a specific third-party state machine framework that could be used to simplify the software design for FDA approval and ease of implementation and testing.

Value delivered

Design reviews and engineering guidance from Netrino are always independent and unbiased. Netrino consultants help clients choose the best software architecture for their needs, from a range that includes real-time operating systems, state machine frameworks, and other open source and commercial alternatives.

In the words of Nipro's engineering manager, "The successful design of complex medical devices containing embedded software requires managing complexity with a robust methodology. Netrino provided expert advice in choosing a design. The guidance from Netrino allowed us to maximize our productivity and compress the schedule, while maintaining the highest quality standards--a tremendous value!"

Learn more about Netrino Consulting.