Medical device interoperability and data integration to clinical information systems: medical device data alignment.

Aligning and synchronizing data from disparate medical devices can be an impediment to interoperability with electronic medical record systems (EMR). While some medical devices support open standards-based data communication, like Health Level Seven (HL7), many medical devices still do not. Even when medical devices support open standards, terminology and units of measurement may not be consistent across medical devices. Devices that perform the same function may have different parameters and use different terminology. While to some this may seem a small issue, each medical device represents a data silo with a unique data model. This model’s terms and definitions must be aligned with a common data model to ensure that information derived at the point of care from any medical device, irrespective of vendor, conforms to common definitions employed by the clinical staff. Healthcare professionals require a unified representation of information to effectively support patient care. This paper discusses the problem of medical device data alignment and its impact on clinical information system (CIS) implementation.