SOA-BD: Service Oriented Architecture for Biomedical Devices

Introduction: The communication of information systems with biomedical devices has become complex not only due to the existence of several private communication protocols, but also to the immutable way that software is embedded into these devices. In this sense, this paper proposes a service-oriented architecture to access biomedical devices as a way to abstract the mechanisms of writing and reading data from these devices, thus contributing to enable the focus of the development team of biomedical software to be intended for its functional requirements, i.e. business rules relevant to the problem domain. Methods The SOA-BD architecture consists of five main components: A Web Service for transport and conversion of the device data, Communication Protocols to access the devices, Data Parsers to preprocess data, a Device Repository to store data and transmitted information and Error handling, for error handling of these information. For the development of SOA-BD, technologies such as the XML language and the Java programming language were used. Besides, Software Engineering concepts such as Design Patterns were also used. For the validation of this work, data has been collected from vital sign monitors in an Intensive Care Unit using HL7 standards. Results The tests obtained a difference of about only 1 second in terms of response time with the use of SOA-BD. Conclusion SOA-BD achieves important results such as the reduction on the access protocol complexity, the opportunity for treating patients over long distances, allowing easier development of monitoring applications and interoperability with biomedical devices from diverse manufacturers.

引言：信息系统与生物医学设备间的信息交互正日趋复杂，这不仅缘于各类私有通信协议的存在，更在于软件嵌入此类设备后难以变更的固有特性。有鉴于此，本文提出一种面向服务架构（Service-Oriented Architecture, SOA）以访问生物医学设备，通过抽象此类设备的数据读写机制，助力生物医学软件开发团队将开发重心聚焦于功能需求，即与问题域相关的业务规则。
方法：本文提出的SOA-BD架构包含五大核心组件：用于设备数据传输与转换的Web服务、用于设备访问的通信协议、用于数据预处理的解析器（Data Parsers）、用于存储数据与传输信息的设备资源库（Device Repository），以及用于各类异常处理的错误处理模块。SOA-BD的开发采用了可扩展标记语言（Extensible Markup Language, XML）与Java编程语言等技术，同时融入了设计模式等软件工程概念。为验证本研究的有效性，本文采用健康级别7（Health Level 7，HL7）标准，从重症监护病房（Intensive Care Unit, ICU）的生命体征监护仪中采集数据。
结果：测试结果显示，采用SOA-BD架构后，系统响应时间仅存在约1秒的偏差。
结论：SOA-BD架构取得了多项重要成果：降低了访问协议的复杂度，支持开展远程患者诊疗，简化了监护应用的开发流程，并可实现与不同厂商生产的生物医学设备的互操作性。