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The Medical Device "Plug-and-Play" (MD PnP) Interoperability Program is leading the adoption of open standards and technologies for safe integration of medical devices and HIT to improve patient safety and healthcare efficiency.

 

Medical Device "Plug-and-Play" Interoperability Program

QUICK LINKS

> MD PnP White Paper
> ICE Standard (ASTM F2761)
MD FIRE
> Program Leadership
> Upcoming Events

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CONTACT INFORMATION

MD PnP Program
65 Landsdowne St., Suite 200
Cambridge, MA 02139
info@mdpnp.org

Julian M. Goldman, MD
Program Director
jgoldman@mdpnp.org

Sue Whitehead

Program Manager
617-768-8760
swhitehead@partners.org

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NEWS

10/07/10: MD PnP Awarded $10M Grant from NIH/NIBIB
Funds will be used to develop a prototype healthcare intranet for improved health outcomes


> MORE NEWS

The Challenge: How can we better use medical devices to improve the safety of medical care?

Medical devices are essential to the practice of modern medicine. Clinical measurements such as blood pressure and temperature, x-ray and ultrasound imaging, administration of intravenous medications, and support of critical life functions all require medical devices. However, despite our reliance on sophisticated medical equipment, most devices are not designed to interconnect with other devices. Therefore, it is difficult to connect individual devices into integrated medical systems to improve patient care and avoid unnecessary accidents.

The Answer: Facilitate the adoption of open standards and technologies for medical device interoperability, based on clinical requirements.
 
OR of the Future at MGHThe Medical Device “Plug-and-Play” (MD PnP) Interoperability Program is accelerating the adoption of medical device interoperability to enable the creation of complete and accurate electronic health records and the cost-effective development of innovative third-party medical “apps” for diagnosis, treatment, research, safety and quality improvements, equipment management, and adverse event detection and reporting when using networked medical devices for clinical care.

Our team is working to develop sharable databases, tools, and applications that will enable a broader community of researchers and manufacturers to implement medical device interoperability. We have taken a multi-faceted approach to reduce key barriers to achieving interoperability, including:
  • Development and support of suitable open standards (e.g. ASTM F2761, Integrated Clinical Environment, or “ICE”)
  • Elicitation, analysis, and modeling of clinical use cases and system engineering requirements for an open architecture instantiation of ICE as a platform and “ecosystem”
  • Alignment of clinical, manufacturer, and FDA regulatory expectations
  • Implementation of prototype use cases in an open “sandbox” environment


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