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 to form the basis for cross-manufacturer networking of medical devices. The integration of the IEEE and the IHE ensures international dissemination.
It goes without saying that medical devices are subject to the highest functional safety and cybersecurity requirements. Ethernet-based communication and a service-orientated architecture (SOA) with established security elements were therefore used in the design.
Benefits of SDC.
SDC is an enabler for various use cases, particularly in operating theatres and intensive care units, a small selection of which is shown 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 via an alarm management system. This eliminates local noise pollution and allows 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. With SDC, it is possible to transmit 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, which is prone to errors and labor-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.
After: "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.
Functionality
The application-relevant data is written by the providers to a memory area called the "Medical Data Information Base" (MDIB) and written from there to the MDIB of the higher-level consumer. In this context, one also speaks of digital twins. The data is available in a structured form with its description.
Range of functions
SDC offers such a wide range of functions that all the use cases discussed so far have been easy to visualise. Get, set and subscribe methods are available.
Activities
embeX has been involved in the dissemination of SDC since 2019 - initially by participating 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, which is characterised by the fact that it supports both the original XML format and the modern gRPC.
Stacks are integrated into the medical products of well-known manufacturers until they are ready for approval, taking into account all safety and security requirements.
