Background: The MIB or IEEE 1073 was designed as a medical device communication standard with open system interconnect (OSI) compliance. The four user requirements identified in 1989 for medical device communications are: 1) Frequent reconfiguration of the network, 2) Allow “plug and play” operation by users, 3) Associate devices with a specific bed and patient, and 4) Support a wide range of hospital computer system topologies. Although the IEEE standard was approved in Dec. 1994 at present, the MIB is not widely available in medical devices. Our objective was to perform real-time data verification analysis between a medical device and it's MIB output.
Methods: We used a setup that consisted of an infusion pump, a device communication controller (DCC), a host PC with a 4-port bedside communication controller (BCC) card, and a Windows NT display program to view the MIB compliant data. In order to evaluate the medical device, display parameters, alarms, and internal system conditions were chosen. The MIB vendor, provided demonstration code for the DCC memory chip and the NT display program; so the pump display data could be compared with the MIB data stream. Data analysis included the areas of connectivity, data validity, and data descriptors.
