Medical Devices Connectivity
Iternational Standard integration modules for electronic medical devices
Five reasons why medical device connectivity is important.
- Verify the patient identity
- Set the correct procedure parameters on the device
- Ensure the delivery and safekeeping of the device analysis results
- Secure patient private healthcare information (PHI)
- Improve productivity
Adhering to international standards and common industry practices.
It is very important to select the correct communication standard for your device based on common industry practices. At the moment, these standards are DICOM® and HL7®. In general DICOM is used for Medical Imaging and HL7 for healthcare IT but there’s an overlap between the two and it’s important to select the right one or if necessary to implement both.
In-house vs. Third-party
Unlike other standards, such as JPEG or HTTP for example, the Healthcare information technology standards, DICOM and HL7, are overwhelmingly detailed and complex. While most international standards are reletively short and focused on a narrow, well defined problem, HL7 and DICOM try to cover as much as possible.
Data model, network protocol, file format, workflow procedures, image compression, internationalization, semantic analysis, are just few examples of the many problems that these standards address, sometime in more than one way. Moreover, both DICOM and HL7 are constantly updated and expanded, sometimes 2, 3 and even 4 times every year.
While large enterprise organizations can afford large, dedicated, teams to develop and maintain their integration modules, other companies find this task challenging.
Commercial vs. Open-Source
To demonstrate the problem we encourage you to try a quick search for open source projects in this domain. We found out that the majority of these projects quickly become outdated due to all kind of reasons. Sometimes the students that started them graduate and move on, sometimes the company that started them is closed and sometimes the project is purchased by a commercial entity and either becomes commercial or simply removed from the internet.
HRZ is committed to your success
Since 2002 our team helped dozens of companies and organizations worldwide to meet their Medical Imaging and Healthcare IT goals. Our products perform worldwide as OEM and as end-user solutions. This knowhow and experience is the cornerstone of our technology. We offer validated, documented, field tested, proven technology backed up by our comprehensive service agreement and support plan.