Many (if not most) medical devices (think MRI/CAT/US, whatever) run on a variant of Windows as the underlying OS, be it standard or embedded. Switching to use an NTP server on the local network would be trivial.

The BIGGER problem (IMHO) is that these devices aren't shipped with any sort of malware protection, for the most part. One bogus USB stick plugged in, and..... I've spent years in the medical device field. The reliance on hospitals securing their networks, and not securing quarter million dollar devices at the manufacturer end always freaked me out. But again, the problem was how do you get updates, without communicating with the outside world and make it easy? Hospital IT staff are notoriously overworked and underfunded.

Conundrum

-jim

In the early 80's, fresh from a move to Northern California I took a job ($7.50 an hour or so) working at a lab that did Neutron Radiography. The process and results themselves are actually really cool. We'd test things like turbine blades for jet aircraft for porosity or residual casting material, welding flaws in Space Shuttle engines. Neat stuff. Then, it was sort of off in an orchard area with a few houses around. Now? Subdivisions, crowd it. That being said, it really is a low-impact sort of deal. Fire up the reactor in the morning, work, power it down in the afternoon. Within 20 minutes of shutdown you could walk past the containment wall, peer down into the pool and watch the blue glow fade. Neat job, for someone just exploring their potential career field. Twenty years later, I was back in the radiography field from a medical devices software bent.

And yes, well after, my reproductive organs functioned just fine, thank you. ;)

-jim

nice reference. Old-school... -jim

http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lkjsa0vvlq1qzu2tdo1_400.gif