Improve Everyday Life

National Instruments takes pride in the innovative, life-changing solutions that its customers develop using its products. From a device that helps doctors detect and monitor early tooth decay to robotic arms that doctors can attach to endoscopes to remove digestive tumors, NI customers around the world continue to have a positive impact on the lives of millions of people.

Recognizing Leaders Who Are Improving the World With New Medical Devices
The Graphical System Design Achievement Awards is the company's annual awards ceremony to recognize engineers and scientists worldwide who are making an impact with NI technologies.

At the 2010 ceremony, NI recognized two medical device companies for their efforts in developing applications that exhibit the greatest potential to improve the quality of life through medical device design and development.

Dr. Koneswaran Sivagurunathan from Quantum Dental Technologies in Canada won the Medical Device Design and Development Award for developing the Canary System, a noninvasive medical imaging device for early detection and monitoring of tooth decay. Using NI LabVIEW and USB data acquisition modules, Sivagurunathan built a system that could detect risk factors as well as tooth conditions more accurately than current technologies.

Another leader in medical device design, Felipe Echeverri of Biorep Technologies in Miami, Florida, received the Humanitarian of the Year Award. Using NI tools, Echeverri and his team created an automated perifusion system to improve throughput and repeatability in cell secretion analysis, which is routinely conducted with pancreatic islets in type 1 diabetes research. The company used the graphical system design platform to control a complex automated medical instrument and reduce development time from 12 to three months.