The Patient Care Device (PCD) Domain of Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise announced today that it will be significantly upgrading its exhibit-hall booth demonstrations at the upcoming AAMI Conference & Expo.

According to Manny Furst, PCD technical project manager, in previous years, the group has held demonstrations of medical device interoperability from a 20-foot booth “with 10 to 12 companies and lots of posters describing the technical work as well as the benefits.” This year, he said, the demonstration will be impressive, with a “50-foot booth and 11 systems demonstrating standards-based interoperable messages.”

The IHE is an initiative to create a standards-based framework for passing vital health information seamlessly within and across multiple healthcare enterprises. Systems that support IHE integration profiles work together better, are easier to implement, and help care providers use information more effectively. The PCD is concerned with use cases in which at least one actor (sending or receiving function) is a regulated patient care device.

The group’s booth at AAMI will highlight working demonstrations of the following standards-based profile messages:

  • Device enterprise communication, providing electronic messages for physiologic and operational data
  • Point-of-care infusion verification, which provides the ability to program an IV pump from the physician’s order using the EMR’s barcode medication administration workflow
  • Infusion pump event communication, which provides operational data (eg, start and stop, transition to KVO) for documentation in the patient record
  • Alert communication management, enabling interoperable communication of alarms and advisories (eg, heart rate, IV line occlusion, bed rail position)
  • Device management communication, for device condition (eg, battery and self-test data) and status (eg, in use/standby and ac/battery power) and other data to the CMMS to significantly improve medical equipment management
  • Location services (LS), providing standards-based location information to the CMMS.

“It’s exciting to see the medical equipment management groups so close to publishing a trial implementation document that allows medical devices, location services, and CMMS systems to interoperate,” said Steve Merritt, past co-chair of the IHE PCD Planning Committee. “We have seen great participation from the stakeholders to advance this leap forward in technology management. It’s truly rewarding to see the device community come together and demonstrate the fruits of our labor at AAMI, so that we can continue to improve patient safety and clinical efficiency, while reducing healthcare delivery costs.”

The IHE-PCD demonstration will be held in booth 108 in the AAMI exhibit hall from May 31 to June 2. The demonstration is sponsored by AAMI, the American College of Clinical Engineering (ACCE) and the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS).