Medical DPWS: New IEEE 11073 standard for safe and interoperable medical device communication

The number of devices in an operation room (OR) and the complexity of the components and the overall system increases continuously. Today's vendor-dependent integrated ORs are expensive and not able to handle this complexity because they can only form isolated solutions. Thus a device communication for medical devices among each other and to medical information systems has to be based on open and vendor-independent standards. In this paper we will present new standards for networked Point-of-Care medical devices that will be part of the IEEE 11073 family of standards. A service-oriented device communication is defined by means of an architecture definition, a transport specification called Medical Devices Profile for Web Services (MDPWS), and a Domain Information & Service Model. The new system will make the complexity of a comprehensive OR integration manageable and thereby improve patient's safety. The focus of this paper is on MDPWS that enables a device communication for medical requirements and safety issues, like safe data transmission that will typically be used for safe remote control (dual channel and safety context), data streaming, and compact transmission. The suitability of the concept has been shown by a demonstrator with over 20 real world OR devices from more than 10 vendors.