IEEE 11073 SDC.
In the IT world, standards such as USB and HDMI have long formed the basis for seamless communication. The IEEE 11073 standard is currently developing rapidly as the basis for the cross-manufacturer networking of medical devices. International distribution is ensured through the involvement of the IEEE and the IHE.
Medical devices are naturally subject to the highest requirements in terms of functional safety and cybersecurity. Conceptually, Ethernet-based communication and a service-oriented architecture (SOA) with established security elements were therefore used.
Benefits of SDC.
SDC is an enabler for various use cases, particularly in operating theatres and intensive care units. A small selection of these use cases is described below:
Silent ICU
In intensive care units, up to 350 medically irrelevant acoustic alarms are triggered per patient per day, causing stress for patients and medical staff. With SDC, alarms can be suppressed locally and effectively distributed to doctors and nurses through an alarm management system, eliminating local noise disturbances and allowing hospital staff to focus on medical priorities.
Quarantine station
Entering quarantine stations requires time-consuming changing procedures, poses a risk of infection for medical staff and generates large amounts of waste from protective clothing. SDC allows staff to transfer the most important information about the patient's health status to the secure area and adjust device settings remotely.
Documentation
The law requires various device settings to be logged at short intervals, a process that is prone to errors and labour-intensive. With SDC, these device settings can be stored reliably and fully automatically in the databases (PDMS/HIS).
Quality assurance
Many time-consuming measures for ensuring the quality of operations can only be carried out after the operation and therefore have no effect on the outcome of the operation. SDC enables real-time quality assurance and prevents treatment errors.
According to: "SDC Cathedral Window (Version 2)", Martin Kasparick and Björn Andersen, Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode
Technical overview.
Roles
The SDC standard defines the roles of service providers and service consumers. Typical examples of providers are ventilators and infusion pumps. Typical examples of consumers are devices with an HMI, such as patient monitors and video displays. The standard provides for multi-consumer capability for providers and multi-provider capability for consumers.
Function
The application-relevant data is written by the providers to a storage area called a "Medical Data Information Base" (MDIB) and from there to the MDIB of the higher-level consumer. In this context, one also speaks of digital twins. In the process, the data is available in structured form with its description.
Scope of functions
SDC offers such a wide range of functions that all the use cases discussed so far have been easy to illustrate. Get, Set and Subscribe methods are available.
Activities
Since 2019, embeX has been involved in promoting SDC, initially through its participation in the BMBF-funded PoCSpec project.
In a strategic collaboration, embeX is developing a particularly powerful and comprehensive SDC Stack in accordance with IEEE 11073 exclusively for Vector Informatik GmbH. One of its distinguishing features is that it supports both the original XML format and the modern gRPC.
For renowned manufacturers, stacks are integrated into their medical devices until they are ready for approval, taking all safety and security concerns into account.
