Data communications can be complex and difficult to implement, depending on the existing
infrastructure of the facility. Although it is not a new issue in a hospital, it can be an
infrastructure concern with the medical devices in the clinical setting. Most areas in a hospital
use networks to integrate hospital/department applications for data collection and
access to patient information. Manufacturers of medical equipment and, especially,
patient monitors have created a data communication network to display patient data. The
communication protocol between the devices has been the priority for the manufacture
software application and is transmitted via a serial cable and RS-232 connector. Networks
were created to collect real-time patient data from multiple deceives and to display them
in a centralized location. These data networks are installed in a hospital infrastructure
specifically for these medical devices and exclusive to the rest of the hospital’s data networks.
Having these exclusive networks resulted in a secure and reliable network for realtime
critical patient data. Because these devices are on an exclusive network and usually
are proprietary, they cannot communicate with other applications and data unless these
are provided by the same manufacture using the same protocols. These systems are limited
to a specific area, usually one critical care area with limited distance between the farthest
two devices or nodes on the network. Most of the medical equipment manufactures
have adopted standard network protocols established by IEEE 802 standards (see
Chapters 97, 98, and 102). This allows more integration with standard network hardware
and other hospital systems and applications.