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Comment by pixl97 | Hacker News Reader

In general med tech = so expensive your eyes bleed and your brain melts.

I'm assuming they've dropped in price a pretty good amount now, but digital x-ray machines with the require software were near hundred thousand price range and typically tied around some windows operating system. So if the controller came with XP, never expect to go to a new operating system. The companies general answers were, oh, you need a controller with a new OS, spend another $100k for the next gen, which unless you're pumping out huge numbers of xrays was just not going to happen.

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>So if the controller came with XP, never expect to go to a new operating system.

That's not necessarily a bad thing!

In our industry, the idea of something using XP is ridiculous. Applying our experience to the medical field is a bad idea!

It's an appliance. It doesn't really matter what OS it runs as long as its stable and certified to do. It spits out imagery which you can then process and view on any compatible device - often a reasonably modern computer running some sort of health informatics platform.

For what it's worth, the "XP" OS is often licensed and supported for well longer than a consumer SKU. IIRC microsoft provided support and security updates for embedded/appliance applications until 2019!

These devices are often not openly networked, or if they are, they are through some sort of gateway that's appropriately locked down and updated.

It's an appliance with huge gaping security flaws that its very creator says you should use under approximately no circumstances.

> For what it's worth, the "XP" OS is often licensed and supported for well longer than a consumer SKU. IIRC microsoft provided support and security updates for embedded/appliance applications until 2019!

You're 100% right but that still means the thing has been sitting around for half a decade with no security updates whatsoever.

There is a fine line between stability and simply being a miser and refusing to update things within a reasonable period of time. Healthcare, especially corporate healthcare run by people other than physicians, is far to much on the miser end of the spectrum.

I recommend you all read the 2023 FDA cybersecurity expectations before commenting. https://www.fda.gov/media/119933/download

>These devices are often not openly networked, or if they are, they are through some sort of gateway that's appropriately locked down and updated.

Possibly in major hospitals with large large IT teams...

But I've worked in a lot of smaller clinics and the term 'often' changes to 'almost never'.

> In our industry, the idea of something using XP is ridiculous.

Only because of the lack of (security, drivers) updates though right? If I couldn't use Linux or macOS I'd rather use XP (if it were current) than anything that's come since.

(I also don't need accessibility features which I'm sure have come a long way.)

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