A framework for the safe interoperability of medical devices in the presence of network failures

Abstract

There exists a growing need for automated interoperability among medical devices in modern healthcare systems. This requirement is not just for convenience, but to prevent the possibility of errors due to the complexity of interactions between the devices and human operators. Hence, a system supporting such interoperability is supposed to provide the means to interconnect distributed medial devices in an open space, so must be designed to account for network failures. In this paper, we introduce a generic framework, the Network-Aware Supervisory System (NASS) to integrate medical devices into such a clinical interoperability system that uses real networks. It provides a development environment, in which medical-device supervisory logic can be developed based on the assumptions of an ideal, robust network. A case study shows that the NASS framework provides the same procedural effectiveness as the original logic based on the ideal network model but with protection against real-world network failures.