DEVICES SHOULD BE TAILORED FOR ADVANCED SURGICAL ROOM DESIGNS, EXPERTS SAY
Devicemakers need to design products that will work in the high-tech hospital environment of the future, experts said at a conference earlier this month.
New operating room designs in particular will require device firms to integrate technologies into their products that allow for maximum compatibility with sophisticated computer programs as well as other devices.
Medical equipment vendors should provide digital output and a plug-and-play (PnP) standard on all devices, Warren Sandberg, an anesthesiologist with Massachusetts General Hospital, said at the World Healthcare Innovation and Technology Conference in Washington, D.C. This will help shorten surgical setup times for hospital staff and remove the need for each new component to be validated, he added.
PnP is a computer feature that allows a new device to be used without reconfiguration or manual installation of a device driver -- computer software that allows interaction with hardware devices. The most important aspect of PnP is that the hardware must allow new devices to be plugged in without causing physical or electrical damage to components.