Originally Published MX November/December 2005

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES

"The IEEE standards for communication between medical devices are not sufficient," according to C. Peter Waegemann, an internationally known expert on medical records. "They do not provide enough detail and do not work with enough applications," he says.

Waegemann, the CEO of the Medical Records Institute (Boston) and chair of the Mobile Healthcare Alliance (MoHCA; Washington, DC), is also greatly concerned about a specific issue: electromagnetic interference (EMI). "Medical device manufacturers need to pay great attention to EMI," says Waegemann. "They should be concerned with providing shielding for electronic devices to ensure that they are not susceptible to electromagnetic interference from each other."