Integrated Data Exchange and Archival (IDEA)

Abstract : Lack of interoperability between medical devices has consistently been one of the main challenges for implementing next generation medical decision support systems. The inability of medical systems to exchange information and data severely limits the ability of advanced algorithms to effectively process data streams from different sources. This data exchange is needed to make meaningful decisions for many aspects of patient care. The development of new standard communication, interface, and data exchange protocols is therefore critical to advancing medical decision-support software. The IDEA system provides both a hardware and software middleware layer to third-party software applications that require data from multiple medical devices in order to operate as designed. The IDEA system uses a client/server model and standardized data exchange protocol to allow third-party software to abstract medical device hardware details away from the software application and move those details to the IDEA server/system. As such, the IDEA system provides an open standards approach to interface with diverse medical devices and patient data. This enables third-party software developers to focus on decision-support algorithms as opposed to hardware-dependent details, which are nonstandard and subject to change by device manufactures.