30 | Automated Testing
Doctoring the code
Alen Zukich, director at source code analysis specialist Klocwork
explores how software testing can help save lives while reducing
costs in the rapidly changing medical device industry.
W
hen lives are at stake, it is good practice to have some peer
software bugs are not code reviews take place in-house on
just a nuisance, they a regular basis. The danger is an over-
can have serious, and reliance on this technique, especially
even fatal, consequences. A glitch in a as it is not scalable across large code
medical device can mean pacemakers bases and prone to human error.
don’t keep hearts beating, diabetics However valuable this
can’t check their insulin levels and straightforward inspection process
a patient’s heart isn’t properly is, it has limitations. In practice,
monitored. Not to mention the lost embedded applications in medical
revenue and damaged brand reputation devices have now grown to a point
for the manufacturer. where rigorous manual review of all
possible paths and subsystems are
Testing challenges in healthcare unrealistic. For example, the operating The operating system and
The traditional approach to eliminating system and applications software
applications software
programming bugs is manual code within a heart lung machine may
review, often referred to as peer consist of millions of lines of code,
within a heart lung
review. Despite its effectiveness, it’s written by large teams of developers
machine may consist of
probably the most maligned form spread around the world. The millions of lines of code,
of software verification since it opportunities for insidious bugs are
written by large teams
often involves sitting in a room with clearly huge.
of developers spread
colleagues and senior designers staring
at the code that’s been written to Finding a cure
around the world. The
ensure code and design integrity and A key point to remember is that the opportunities for insidious
security. Many organisations outsource earlier bugs are found, the faster
bugs are clearly huge.
this task, which is understandable, but and cheaper it is to correct them. An
T.E.S.T | June 09 June 09 | T.E.S.T
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