Service-Oriented Medical Device Connectivity: Particular Interoperability Standards for High Frequency Surgical Equipment and External Control Devices

Manufacturer-independent medical device interoperability has been strongly demanded by the clinicians and healthcare delivery organizations (HDOs), however has not been achieved in practice for decades. The ISO/IEEE 11073 Service-oriented Device Connectivity (SDC) family of standards constitutes a paradigm shift. This work supplements SDC with Device Specializations (DevSpecs) or Modular Specifications (ModSpecs): particular interoperability standards for high frequency (HF) surgical equipment and external control devices, such as foot or finger switches. They provide models to describe these devices in a service-oriented medical device system and modes of interaction with other network participants. Additionally, we contribute to the ISO/IEEE 11073-10101 nomenclature standard to provide semantic descriptions of the exchanged information. This is a key enabler for safe and effective medical device interoperability to support the caregivers and improve patient safety as well as clinical outcome.

A QoS-Based Medium Access Control Protocol for WBANs and Its Performance Evaluation

Nowadays, Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) are used in many fields. WBANs are described as small sensor nodes that communicate wirelessly and provide services to the personal area. Quality of Service (QoS) is an essential issue for WBANs due to the importance of human life. QoS problems can only be solved with a robust Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol in WBANs. To find a solution to this problem, developers performed many MAC protocols for WBANs. ISO/IEEE 11073 health informatics defines the standard of personal health information and purposes to provide interoperability between medical technologies. This paper presents a MAC protocol that provides ISO/IEEE 11073 communication standards with QoS support, bases on cross-layer architecture. We designed a slot assignment scheme, prioritization mechanism, admission control mechanism to provide QoS. The performance evaluation of the proposed MAC protocol is compared with IEEE 802.15.4 and IEEE 802.15.6 protocols by considering end-to-end delay, packet loss ratio, and throughput parameters, and it has achieved out performance. It is observed that the proposed protocol doesn't exceed 45 ms delay, reached 81% traffic load, and a maximum error rate of 0.162%.

ISO/IEEE 11073 Treadmill Interoperability Framework and its Test Method: Design and Implementation

Background Regular physical activity is proven to help prevent and treat noncommunicable diseases such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and breast and colon cancer. The exercise data generated by health and fitness devices (eg, treadmill, exercise bike) are very important for health management service providers to develop personalized training programs. However, at present, there is little research on a unified interoperability framework in the health and fitness domain, and there are not many solutions; besides, the privatized treadmill data transmission scheme is not conducive to data integration and analysis. Objective This article will expand the IEEE 11073-PHD standard protocol family, develop standards for health and fitness device (using treadmill as an example) based on the latest version of the 11073-20601 optimized exchange protocol, and design protocol standards compliance testing process and inspection software, which can automatically detect whether the instantiated object of the treadmill meets the standard. Methods The study includes the following steps: (1) Map the data transmitted by the treadmill to the 11073-PHD objects; (2) Construct a programming language structure corresponding to the 11073-PHD application protocol data unit (APDU) to complete the coding and decoding part of the test software; and (3) Transmit the instantiated simulated treadmill data to the gateway test software through transmission control protocol for standard compliance testing. Results According to the characteristics of the treadmill, a data exchange framework conforming to 11073-PHD is constructed, and a corresponding testing framework is developed; a treadmill agent simulation is implemented, and the interoperability test is performed. Through the designed testing process, the corresponding testing software was developed to complete the standard compliance testing of the treadmill. Conclusions The extended research of IEEE 11073-PHD in the field of health and fitness provides a potential new idea for the data transmission framework of sports equipment such as treadmills, which may also provide some help for the development of sports health equipment interoperability standards.

ISO/IEEE 11073 Treadmill Interoperability Framework and its Test Method: Design and Implementation (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Regular physical activity is proven to help prevent and treat noncommunicable diseases such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and breast and colon cancer. The exercise data generated by health and fitness devices (eg, treadmill, exercise bike) are very important for health management service providers to develop personalized training programs. However, at present, there is little research on a unified interoperability framework in the health and fitness domain, and there are not many solutions; besides, the privatized treadmill data transmission scheme is not conducive to data integration and analysis. OBJECTIVE This article will expand the IEEE 11073-PHD standard protocol family, develop standards for health and fitness device (using treadmill as an example) based on the latest version of the 11073-20601 optimized exchange protocol, and design protocol standards compliance testing process and inspection software, which can automatically detect whether the instantiated object of the treadmill meets the standard. METHODS The study includes the following steps: (1) Map the data transmitted by the treadmill to the 11073-PHD objects; (2) Construct a programming language structure corresponding to the 11073-PHD application protocol data unit (APDU) to complete the coding and decoding part of the test software; and (3) Transmit the instantiated simulated treadmill data to the gateway test software through transmission control protocol for standard compliance testing. RESULTS According to the characteristics of the treadmill, a data exchange framework conforming to 11073-PHD is constructed, and a corresponding testing framework is developed; a treadmill agent simulation is implemented, and the interoperability test is performed. Through the designed testing process, the corresponding testing software was developed to complete the standard compliance testing of the treadmill. CONCLUSIONS The extended research of IEEE 11073-PHD in the field of health and fitness provides a potential new idea for the data transmission framework of sports equipment such as treadmills, which may also provide some help for the development of sports health equipment interoperability standards.