Medical Device "Plug and Play" Interoperability

Summary Science Features

MD PnP

The Medical Device "Plug-and-Play" interoperability (MD PnP) program was established by Julian M. Goldman, MD, in 2004 to address the challenge of using modern health information technology to improve the safety of medical diagnosis and therapy. The program?s goals are to guide the development and adoption of open standards to support medical device interoperability, define a safe "least burdensome" regulatory pathway for any proposed system in partnership with regulatory agencies, and elicit high-level user requirements for proposed interoperable systems to improve safety and efficiency.

To support these goals, the program uses the vendor-neutral laboratory "sandbox" that opened in May 2006 to:

• evaluate the ability of interoperability standards to meet clinical requirements
• model clinical use cases in a simulation environment
• develop and test related network safety and security systems, especially those designed to enhance our understanding of the technical and cultural issues at the intersection of Biomedical Engineering and Information Systems)
• support interoperability and conformance testing
• serve as an international resource for the medical device interoperability community.

Our hope is that networked medical device systems will allow for complete and accurate electronic health records, improve workflow, reduce medical errors, and reduce healthcare costs.