Concept of a service-oriented integration architecture for the orthopaedic operating theatre

Abstract:
In modern operating theatres there are an increasing number of technical devices. To enhance possibility of exchange and integrated use of information as well as to support the surgeon during diagnosis and treatment more and more integrated medical operating systems (IORS) are available. Commercial IORS are mainly proprietary developments using usually proprietary communication standards and interfaces, which reduce the possibility to integrate devices from different vendors. To overcome these bottlenecks, there is a need for an open standardized architecture, which is based on standard protocols and interfaces, to be able to integrate devices from different vendors based of heterogeneous software- and hardware-components. The paper presents a concept of such an integration architecture for the OR based on a service-oriented architecture (SOA) and using standardized communication protocols and interface descriptions. A short introduction to the concept of SOA is given, followed by the presentation of the SOA based reference integration concept.