The medical sector represents about 20% of the United States gross domestic product. The rapidly increasing use of software to control medical devices makes the development and production of medical device software and systems a crucial issue, both for the U.S. economy and to assure safe advances in healthcare delivery. There is strong interest in advancing research and development to improve the design, certification, and operation (by both healthcare practitioners and consumers) of medical device software and systems to result in better and more cost-effective medical care.
The purpose of the HCMDSS/MD PnP workshop is to bring together medical device specialists (including researchers, engineers, and clinicians) from clinical environments, industry, research laboratories, academia, and government with the goal of advancing science, technology, and practice to address crucial software and systems issues and challenges in the design, manufacture, certification, use, and interoperability of medical devices.
This joint workshop on HCMDSS (High Confidence Medical Devices, Software, and Systems) and Medical Device Plug-and-Play (MD PnP) Interoperability provides a working forum for the presentation of research and development activities covering all aspects of high integrity medical devices, software, and systems, which is essential to support innovative, networked medical device systems to improve safety and efficiency in health care. The convening of this group of thought leaders in the areas of medical device interoperability and high confidence embedded systems offers a unique opportunity for the kind of intellectual exchange that will advance the field. Previous workshops have resulted in extensive networking and collaborative activities that have facilitated parallel efforts in technology, methodology, and standards development.
The broader impacts of this agenda include the collaborative development of technology and methodology to enable (1) the adoption of innovative approaches to improve patient safety and workflow efficiency, (2) the resulting reduction of healthcare costs, (3) the support of access to health care in remote environments, and (4) the improvement of requirements methodologies to provide a clinical basis for technology development.
