MD PnP

Getting Connected for Patient Safety

Enabling Innovation for patient safety since 2004

The Medical Device "Plug-and-Play" (MD PnP) Interoperability Program is promoting innovation in patient safety and clinical care by leading the adoption of secure patient-centric integration of medical devices and IT systems in clinical environments.

Getting Connected for Patient Safety

Enabling Innovation for patient safety since 2004

The Medical Device "Plug-and-Play" (MD PnP) Interoperability Program is promoting innovation in patient safety and clinical care by leading the adoption of secure patient-centric integration of medical devices and IT systems in clinical environments.

The Medical Device "Plug-and-Play" Interoperability & Cybersecurity Program

Since 2004 advancing safe and secure interoperability to improve patient care

The Challenge: 

How can we better use medical devices to improve the safety of medical care?

Medical devices are essential to the practice of modern medicine. Clinical measurements such as blood pressure and temperature, x-ray and ultrasound imaging, administration of intravenous medications, and support of critical life functions all require medical devices. However, despite our reliance on sophisticated medical equipment, most devices are not designed to interconnect with other devices. Therefore, it is difficult to connect individual devices into integrated medical systems to improve patient care, avoid unnecessary accidents, and obtain comprehensive data to personalize care delivery.

MD PnP

The Answer: 

Facilitate the adoption of open standards and interoperable technologies to securely Integrate Clinical Environments (ICE).

MD PnP

Since its establishment in 2004, the Medical Device "Plug-and-Play" (MD PnP) Interoperability Program has been accelerating the adoption of medical device interoperability to enable the creation of complete

and accurate electronic health records and the cost-effective development of innovative third-party medical "apps" for diagnosis, treatment, research, safety and quality improvements, equipment management, and adverse event detection and reporting when using networked medical devices for clinical care.

Our team is working to develop sharable databases, open-source tools, and applications that will enable a broader community of researchers and manufacturers to implement secure medical device interoperability. We have taken a multi-faceted approach to reduce key barriers to achieving interoperability, including:

  • Support of suitable open standards (e.g., ASTM F2761, Integrated Clinical Environment, or "ICE")
  • An OPEN SOURCE implementation of ICE - See OpenICE
  • Elicitation, analysis, and modeling of clinical use cases and system engineering requirements for an open architecture instantiation of ICE as a platform and "ecosystem."
  • Alignment of the clinical, manufacturer, and FDA regulatory expectations
  • Implementation of prototype use cases in an open "sandbox" environment in our MD PnP Lab
  • Diverse collaboration and engagement
MD PnP

New MD PnP Lab, New MD PnP website!

With our new, expanded lab, we are developing a new website. The new MD PnP website is hosted by Massachusetts General Hospital at https://mdpnp.mgh.harvard.edu/

Update: PMI Challenge for the Underserved

$25,000 in cash prizes has been awarded to the three winners The seven Finalist teams were announced at PCHA Connected Health  Conference on December 12, 2016. Winners were announced at HIMSS in February 2017

Our award-winning Scientific & Educational Exhibit from the American Society of Anesthesiologists 

Our award-winning Scientific & Educational Exhibit from the American Society of Anesthesiologists Annual Meeting

"Integrated Clinical Environments (ICE) to Improve Safety and Enable Rapid Innovation" (click for handout)

>First Place Award!

The brief video shows how integrated data can speed diagnosis and treatment of monitored cardiac arrest

Updates / Selected News

Dec 2020

By MD PnP | March 18, 2021

New AAMI standard on remotely controlled medical devices for COVID-19 care

Read More

July 2020

By MD PnP | March 18, 2021

CDMRP article “Enhancing Healthcare Through Interoperability.”

Read More

February 2017

By MD PnP | March 18, 2021

PMI Challenge for the Underserved completed.

Read More

November 2015

By MD PnP | March 18, 2021

AMIA Pre-Symposium Working Group “Transdisciplinary “Maker Health” Fair (Sponsored by the Nursing Informatics Working Group)

Read More

October 2015

By MD PnP | March 18, 2021

MD PnP team wins two peer-reviewed awards for Educational and Scientific at the American Society of Anesthesiologists annual meeting. Video demo and handout of First Place award – using an ICE platform for patient safety. Handout from Third Place award using QR Codes to obtain medical product information at the point of care.

Read More

February 2015

By MD PnP | March 18, 2021

Dr. Goldman moderates a HIMSS Innovation Community panel on Open Medical Device & Data Integration Platforms

Read More

November 2014

By MD PnP | March 18, 2021

Demonstration of Ebola response work by MD PnP and collaborators. Press coverage from the Boston Globe and WCBV

Read More

September 2014

By MD PnP | March 18, 2021

MD PnP participates in Global City Teams Challenge: SmartAmerica Round 2 at NIST

Read More