Brazilian Developer Hacks Health Care With BeagleBoard And Android

A few years ago, Brazilian developer Daniel Neis Araujo couldn’t imagine building open source health care equipment that could compete with traditional and respected proprietary solutions. But recent advances in Linux and the open hardware movement have allowed a faster development pace and a lower cost of entry for startups in the telemedicine field, in particular, he said.

So six months ago he co-founded Atto Systems Engineering in Florianópolis, Brazil, with the aim of making intercommunication between medical devices better and cheaper. They’re using Android on BeagleBoard to help solve some critical issues, including system consistency after crashes over time, touchscreen interfacing, supported hardware and overall system performance.

“We think that if we can push a little more of the “linux philosophy" into this field, we'll make it better,” Neis Araujo said via email. The startup has faced some criticism from the health care establishment for its open source technical approach, he said. But they’re trying to solve problems that would otherwise have no commercial viability...