Student Project: Implementation of a secure communication with medical input and output devices in intensive care unit

HiWi- und Praktikantenstellen, Studienarbeiten

14.08.2010, Studentische Hilfskräfte, Praktikantenstellen, Studienarbeiten

Student Project: Implementation of a secure communication with medical input and output devices in intensive care unit

Patients in the intensive care, especially after cardiac surgery, need to be monitored all the time. To keep the patients in a stable state, a physician is taking the current physiological signals into account to prescribe certain medication combinations. Programmable syringe pumps are available for this purpose, which can run at different speeds and intervals to infuse different drugs to the patient. In a joint project of TU München and Deutsches Herzzentrum München, a Neuro-Fuzzy controller is developed to analyse the patient's signals (e.g. ECG, arterial pressure, heart rate) and status (e.g. age, preconditions, medical condition) automatically and trigger the syringe pumps accordingly.
The Neuro-Fuzzy controller will be connected to the patient monitoring, which records the different signals from the patient. With these inputs, the controller is able to assess the current status of the patient and conclude in the adequate medication therapy. The syringe pumps are triggered with the according drug dosages to start/stop infusions. As the demand for safety is very high in the medical environment, the communication with the external hardware, the input and output devices has to be secured.

Description

The student will be part of the interdisciplinary research team at the German Heart Centre in Munich. The goal of this project will be, to develop a secure communication with different input or output devices in C++. This will consist of the following tasks:
- Analyse communication protocol of the device
- Find or assemble according cables
- Determine commands, needed by the Neuro-Fuzzy controller
- Implement functional communication to send or retrieve data from the device
- Add safety features to the communiation, e.g. checking answers from the devices and react upon them, use frequent checks to ensure a stable connection, monitor the state of the device
- Document the implemented interfaces and their functionality
Different hardware devices are already available in the project, which still await the according communication implementation in the software. In most cases the hardware does not use a standard cable for communication. That is why it might be neccessary to research, where to nd the compatible connectors or even braze them yourself. After implementing a basic communication (for the purposes of the Neuro-Fuzzy controller), the safety of the connection should be ensured by adding different checks. In the end the implementation as well as the usage of the interface itself are to be fully documented.

Kontakt: n.sprunk@tum.de

More Information

http://gsish.tum.edu/fileadmin/media/Dokumente/StudentProject_GermanHeartCenter_HardwareCommunication.pdf