Dynamic Service Composition for Plug-and-Play Medical Devices

Abstract

Object: Clinical environments are crowded with technology where devices from multiple vendors run into interoperability barriers. Systems of integrated medical devices support improvements in workflow and reductions in medical errors and healthcare costs to the benefit of patients throughout the continuum of care.

Methods: Interoperability is achieved using a middleware for ubiquitous computing based on a service-oriented architecture. Connected devices provide services that can be composed dynamically to achieve extended functionality. We created a dynamic service composition system that generates high-level services based on the information the user provides using natural language. The system finds required devices based on a type of semantic distance between words and device descriptions and establishes connections between devices in order to satisfy the request.

Results: One application of this approach is an intelligent surgical service where the medical doctor uses his voice to control a surgery robot. This scenario is experimented by asking the system to compose a service according to a medical doctor’s request during an appendectomy.

Conclusion: Combining device functionality in order to satisfy a need expressed using a verbal request can be achieved by linking the semantics of the request to the computer understanding of a device. Interacting with medical equipment through the services they provide as plug-and-play devices is not limited to service composition, but also allows prototyping and simulation of various medical scenarios.