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Cover of Medical Device Connectivity

Intellectual Frontiers Press Fieldbooks

Medical Device Connectivity

A Fieldbook for Buying and Building Secure, Interoperable, AI-Ready Medical Devices

Safe offline. Better online.

Infusion pumps, ventilators, monitors, imaging systems, lab analyzers, dispensing cabinets, dialysis machines, sterilizers, and refrigerators all do work the hospital is accountable for. When a device can’t report that work, staff write it down by hand, rebuild it after the fact, or never learn it at all.

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Most hospital devices do real clinical and operational work, and most of them can’t report what they did.

The people who look after these devices carry that cost. Biomedical and clinical engineering teams load drug libraries one pump at a time and search for recalled units. Quality and regulatory teams at manufacturers investigate complaints without the device’s own records.

This fieldbook shows hospitals what to require when they buy institutional devices, and shows manufacturers how to build devices that keep working safely when the network is down, report what they did when it’s up, and give people and AI the evidence they need.

Safe offline. Better online.

What you will be able to do

  • Sort devices by who operates them, whose work they support, and who pays when they fail
  • List the clinical, therapeutic, operational, and assurance evidence each device can produce
  • Write purchase requirements for data, interfaces, updates, and offline behavior
  • Design devices whose essential function never depends on the network or a vendor’s cloud
  • Manage and secure devices as a fleet across their whole life
  • Build testability into devices so AI can help with verification, validation, and regulatory work

The premise

Infusion pumps, ventilators, monitors, imaging systems, lab analyzers, dispensing cabinets, dialysis machines, sterilizers, and refrigerators all do work the hospital is accountable for. When a device can’t report that work, staff write it down by hand, rebuild it after the fact, or never learn it at all.