Patent ID: 8195848

Claim:
A method of using a medical component for diagnosing a patient, the method comprising: automatically communicating a medical operating system to a host processing system from a memory location of the medical component when it is determined that the host processing system does not include a medical operating system optimized to operate with the medical component, the medical operating system taking precedence over a host operating system of the host processing system in a boot process of the host processor when the medical component is coupled to the host processor; processing a confirmation from the host processing system that the medical operating system has repurposed the host processing system and that the medical operating system is now active on the host processing system; automatically communicating an application to the host processing system from a different memory location of the medical component when the host processing system confirms that the medical operating system has repurposed the host processing system; capturing a patient reading through the medical component, wherein the patient reading comprises a photoplethysmograph of a pulse oximeter that indirectly measures oxygen saturation of blood of a patient and changes in blood volume in a skin of the patient; and leveraging a power supply of the host processing system to power the medical component and at least one of a processing resource and an input-output (I/O) resource of the host processing system to run the application in providing a measurement of the patient reading to a user.