VITAL: use and implementation of a medical communication standard in practice

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 (now also part of the IEEE 11073 standards family) 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. Obviously, VITAL covers a very wide range of applications. Thus device manufacturers need assistance to implement on different platforms and systems compliant devices. To meet this requirement not only a library was designed but also a framework with a special plug-in interface was developed. This allows to program simple plug-ins for all different purposes medical devices have. Using this framework a device manufacturer is in the position to produce VITAL compliant devices without the need of knowing details of VITAL itself. The framework is platform independent and therefore usable on different systems especially small embedded devices