Definitely. Each component should do its best to keep on keeping on. The display program should keep displaying something, even it's just the most recent data with a big "connection lost" warning. The device should ring-buffer the data and upon reconnection the screen should show as much as possible. The OS should have a strong opinion that the surgery app is very important, and that should the app fail, it should be restarted instantly.
Moreover, this is the kind of thing that should come up in robustness testing. Things should get bumped and wiggled. They should get unplugged and turned off. If the software is really going to run on random Windows boxes, then it should be tested on random Windows boxes. (At which point somebody will hopefully say, "Wow, this sucks, let's make it an appliance.")
No matter what happens, it shouldn't result in a "mysterious crash right in the middle of a heart procedure when the screen went black and doctors had to reboot their computer".
Moreover, this is the kind of thing that should come up in robustness testing. Things should get bumped and wiggled. They should get unplugged and turned off. If the software is really going to run on random Windows boxes, then it should be tested on random Windows boxes. (At which point somebody will hopefully say, "Wow, this sucks, let's make it an appliance.")
No matter what happens, it shouldn't result in a "mysterious crash right in the middle of a heart procedure when the screen went black and doctors had to reboot their computer".