摘要 |
A device exchange transports messages between autonomous devices in a medical environment. The autonomous devices perform various tasks in the medical environment, such as surgical device control, drug infusion, video recordation, and user interfaces, for example. Each autonomous device has a device specification, published and stored by the device exchange and available to other autonomous devices. The device specification indicates, for each autonomous device, an identifier, a set of outputs and a set of inputs, or commands. Devices interoperate by messages including the device identifier and an output or command without translation or transformation mechanisms such as scripts, protocol translations, drivers or interface modules because each message is based on the published device specification available to all the devices connected to the exchange. Interconnected medical devices therefore interoperate without the need for reconfiguration because each device has internal logic for understanding the messages it sends and receives via the exchange.
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