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Medical Device Communications Testing Project

The reality that medical devices may need to communicate with tens, if not hundreds, of other devices of varying makes, models, and modalities has not only large market implications but may result in life or death scenarios. Acute point-of-care settings such as a hospital's intensive care unit or patient's bedside require each class of medical device to use the same terminology and data organization to seamlessly and reliably communicate physiological data.

To meet this critical healthcare need point of care medical device communication standards that address plug-and-play medical device interoperability are under development. NIST researchers are collaborating with medical device experts to facilitate the development and adoption of standards for medical device communications throughout the healthcare enterprise as well as integrating it into the electronic health record.

NIST researchers have developed test tools and corresponding electronic representation of an international standard's information model that provides several important capabilities leading toward device interoperability.

Why Test?

In a recent survey conducted by Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), the respondents identified “cross enterprise sharing of patient care device data” as one of their highest priorities. Goals established to meet this priority include shortening decision time, increasing productivity, minimizing transcription errors, and investing in and developing ways to correctly define and interpret the data exchanged. To meet such goals of sharing patient care information, data communication among medical devices and clinical information systems is necessary as point-of-care devices are often the primary source (or destination). Conformance and interoperability testing of medical device data communication is essential leading to long term value propositions which include:

• Integrity of data – automatic population of all information systems – reducing medical errors,
• Automating systems to capture clinical data into Electronic Health Records (EHRs) thus saving time for clinicians,
• Improving agility of enterprises to meet varied patient loads,
• Improving life-cycle cost of ownership,
• Access to patient data across devices and systems so custom communication interfaces can be eliminated thus allowing for best of breed and even plug-and-play devices.

This project consists of a standards-based schema and test tool developed by NIST researchers to assist medical device domain experts. Please visit our Test Tools or Medical Device Information Model links for more detail and use of these public domain and freely available resources.

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Date created: September 18, 2007
Last updated: September 21, 2007

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