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2005
Conference Paper
Titel
VITAL: Use and implementation of a medical communication standard in practice
Abstract
Modern medicine, especially intensive care, demands the automated interaction of multiple devices for the monitoring and therapy of patients. At present, the communication between devices from various manufacturers is often impossible due to different interfaces and transmission protocols. Open system architecture and standardized communication protocols like the CEN standard ENV 13734/35 (VITAL) will resolve this issue. VITAL describes the design of communication specifications for the transmission of device and vital parameters, independent of device type or manufacturer as well. Additionally, VITAL defines a general data and communication model enabling access to required data ? even under real-time conditions. VITAL also enables the automatic configuration and coordination of networked devices. The VITAL communication architecture is based on the »Agent/Manager« concept of the ISO-Management-System and therefore defines the application layer in the ISO/OSI Model. This allows the application of VITAL e.g. in combination with Bluetooth, TCP/IP, IrDA, etc. To facilitate automated ad-hoc hardware communication, all transmitted elements of communication must be transformable in appropriate codes. Therefore, VITAL uses an object-oriented information model and a substantial nomenclature for all usable model elements, device types, dimensions, and measuring units, as well as medical values and conditions. Obviously VITAL copes a very big domain of applications. Thus device manufacturers need libraries for different platforms and systems to cope with it and implement compliant devices. With several implementations of the communication protocol for example in C++ and Java especially on embedded systems we developed a variety of libraries. But for an easy use of such libraries a sophisticated application programmer interface (API) is needed. To meet this requirement not only an API was designed but a framework with a special plug-in-interface was developed. This allows programming a simple plug-in for a medical device without knowledge of the VITAL standard. Using this framework a device manufacturer is in the position to produce VITAL compliant devices without the need of knowing details on VITAL it self. The framework is platform independent and therefore usable on different systems especially small embedded devices.