R&D Labs: Key to Faster and Cheaper Software Development

Auriga’s engineering center in Vilnius, Lithuania, opens a new lab for software testing of the medical devices of one of the company’s long-term clients, the world leader in the medical device market. In partnership with the client, Auriga has evolved the project from conceptualization to a crystalized plan in just a couple of months, planning an efficient modern platform equipped with all the necessary tools. The project starts in June 2019, and it will be carried out according to the customer’s processes and the IEC 62304, ISO 13485, and ISO 14971 requirements.

In recent years, Auriga has built 13 R&D labs in Eastern Europe, including eight labs for medical devices. One of our largest software development and testing projects for a European medical device manufacturer started in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, in 2006. Since then, our relationship with the client has strengthened, their confidence in our professionalism has increased, and the project has expanded significantly. To boost the development efficiency, we have launched two labs that are still functioning even today.

Our “medical” labs are equipped with everything necessary. First, these are the medical devices under development in our labs – patient monitoring systems, dialysis systems, ventilators, and infusion pumps. Over our years working with a wide range of medical equipment, we have learned how to create the special conditions for medical software development and testing. Thus, we have a “wet” lab with blood-emulating liquids and a lab that allows working with gases. While developing software for medical devices, we effectively apply our experience from other industries (for example, telecom) and actively involve the Digital Twin concept, such as in functional simulators and HIL simulation for testing.

An R&D lab is an ideal space for developers to implement new features and test how they work before bringing a product to market, ensure interoperability, assemble virtually any hardware configuration, and emulate external systems, services, or applications. In a lab, engineers can reproduce nearly any usage scenario, which is especially important for medical devices, as the risk management process standard ISO 14971 requires potential hazard scenarios to be identified and estimated. Moreover, labs are convenient for transferring a product to a new platform, hardware and/or operating system, and preparing for certification.

What differentiates Auriga from others is that our labs help us cut development and testing time significantly. Auriga is currently operating a dozen R&D labs in Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, and Vilnius. These are not only labs for medical devices, but also embedded software labs, high voltage electrotechnical labs, and others.

What makes our labs efficient for customers? First and foremost, there are significant cost savings they get by avoiding renting additional space, storing and maintaining massive equipment, and hiring in-house specialists. In a nutshell, transferring software development, prototyping, testing, migration, and other tasks to R&D labs is often much simpler, faster, and cheaper than building and maintaining your own engineering center.

Vyacheslav Vanyulin, General Manager at Auriga, explains how customers benefit from such labs:

For almost 30 years already, Auriga has been delivering complex projects in healthcare, avionics, automotive, and other industries, helping customers create high-tech software products that meet the most stringent requirements. We develop the most complex high-precision equipment, including safety- and life-critical solutions, and we rely on international standards and global best practices in our work.

Our clients do not need to spend time and resources to hire engineers and streamline processes – we do it for them, quickly and efficiently. We already have a basis for infrastructure, which means we can deploy a lab in a matter of weeks, ensure a smooth and streamlined shipment process, and provide regular calibration of equipment and third-party simulators. Although the principles for creating our labs are similar, each of them is tailored to the specific needs of a particular client. We have accumulated vast experience of working with large international manufacturers, which helps us run our labs at the highest professional level.

About Auriga, Inc.

Auriga, Inc. is an elite software R&D and IT outsourcing services provider incorporated in the U.S. and operating development centers in Eastern Europe. Auriga offers the full range of software engineering services – managed teams and projects – for high-tech and software vendors, allowing them to quickly build and scale teams, access required skills and expertise, and focus on strategic tasks. The client list includes Broadvision, Chrysler, Dialogic, Digital Guardian, IBM, LYNX, nVent, and many other leading technology companies.