A component for remote viewing and monitoring of mechanical ventilator data

Many medical device manufacturers provide methods for collecting and analyzing data from their devices. While some of these methods are sophisticated, others can be as simple as requiring standard serial interface connectivity. However, in addition to physical device connectivity, there oftentimes exists a proprietary syntax or language that, in this age of standards, minimizes the likelihood of deploying the communication methods from one manufacturer to devices of another manufacturer. Unlike the Health Level-7 standards, these basic machine interfaces are presently unique to each manufacturer, requiring that communication methods be tailored in relation to the type of devices deployed, and requiring further development, testing, training, and troubleshooting. This paper describes a remedy for this issue in relation to mechanical ventilators. A method is described which employs a user-defined command table that enables a user to deploy the same application infrastructure to other proprietary devices. This infrastructure is built for mechanical ventilators, but can be expanded to accommodate other medical devices. It is referred to as the remote mechanical ventilation manager, or RMVM.