For many of its VI solutions discussed in this chapter, an application development environment
(ADE) called LabVIEW has been used. LabVIEW was created by National
Instruments (Austin, TX). It is an off-the-shelf graphical development environment
designed specifically for developing integrated measurement and automation systems.
Developers assemble user interfaces and high-level functions for data acquisition and
control, signal processing and analysis, and visualization, in the same way that flowcharts
are constructed. With the modularity and hierarchical structure of LabVIEW, users can
quickly and easily prototype, design, deploy, and modify systems. The LabVIEW ADE is
compiled for maximum execution performance, contains hundreds of advanced analysis
routines, and allows developers to quickly design and build advanced applications.
This chapter presents several “real-world” virtual instrument applications and tools that
have been developed to meet the specific needs of health care organizations. Particular
attention is placed on the use of quality control and “performance indicators,” which provide
the ability to trend and forecast various metrics and improve processes. The use of
statistical process control (SPC) and modeling within virtual instruments is be demonstrated.
Finally, several clinical research applications of virtual instrumentation are
described