EXCLUSIVE PAIRING TECHNIQUE FOR BLUETOOTH COMPLIANT MEDICAL DEVICES

• US 20080285626A1
• Filed: 05/17/2007
• Published: 11/20/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 05/17/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Johnson & Johnson Surgical Vision, Inc. (Johnson & Johnson)
• Original Assignee: Advanced Medical Optics Incorporated (Johnson & Johnson)
• Inventors: Hunter, Timothy, Claus, Michael J., Ma, Dung
• Granted Patent: US 8,768,251 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 375/133
• CPC Class Codes: A61F 9/007 Methods or devices for eye surgery
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 40/20 for the management or administration of healthcare resources or facilities, e.g. managing hospital staff or surgery rooms
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 40/40 for the management of medical equipment or devices, e.g. scheduling maintenance or upgrades
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/12 specially adapted for proprietary or special-purpose networking environments, e.g. medical networks, sensor networks, networks in vehicles or remote metering networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 12/06 Authentication
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 12/50 Secure pairing of devices
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 84/18 Self-organising networks, e.g. ad-hoc networks or sensor networks

Abstract

A method and system of establishing communications between at least two independent software modules in a safety critical system, such as a medical system, is provided. The design comprises providing an exclusive Bluetooth connection between at least two wireless devices. A master wireless device is configured with Bluetooth master device functionality and a slave wireless device is configured with Bluetooth slave device functionality. The wireless devices are employed in performing a medical procedure. The method further comprises acquiring a stored unique address from the slave wireless device over the Bluetooth connection, comparing the stored unique address to a master wireless device unique address available at the master wireless device, and exclusively pairing the master wireless device and the slave wireless device when the unique address acquired from the slave wireless device is found to identically match the master wireless device unique address.

Claims

1. A method for exclusively pairing wireless devices in a medical environment, comprising:

providing a Bluetooth connection between at least two wireless devices, wherein a master wireless device is configured with Bluetooth master device functionality and a slave wireless device is configured with Bluetooth slave device functionality, said wireless devices employed in performing a medical procedure;

acquiring a stored unique address from the slave wireless device over said Bluetooth connection;

comparing the stored unique address to a master wireless device unique address available at the master wireless device; and

exclusively pairing said master wireless device and the slave wireless device when the unique address acquired from the slave wireless device is found to identically match the master wireless device unique address.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein exclusively pairing enables a master-slave communications path to connect one master wireless device to one slave wireless device.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the master wireless device further establishes a single exclusive pairing with one slave wireless device at one time.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein acquiring further comprises:

configuring the one slave wireless device to store the master wireless device unique address;

retrieving the unique address stored in the slave wireless device; and

sending said unique address to the master wireless device when requested by the master wireless device.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the comparing further comprises determining whether stored unique address acquired from the slave wireless device is identical to the master wireless device unique address.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising explicitly un-pairing said Bluetooth master device and said one Bluetooth slave device when the acquired unique address does not match the Bluetooth master device'"'"'s unique address.

7. An exclusive pairing medical system for pairing a Bluetooth compliant medical slave device to a medical instrument host comprising a Bluetooth pairing utility and an exclusive pairing utility, the exclusive pairing medical system comprising;

a medical device controller configured to control communications between the instrument host and the Bluetooth compliant medical slave device over a wireless communications network and enable exclusive pairing between the instrument host and the Bluetooth compliant medical slave device;

wherein the Bluetooth compliant medical slave device is configured to support a wireless mode of operation, and further wherein the instrument host is configured to establish exclusive pairing between the instrument host and the Bluetooth compliant medical slave device over the wireless communications network.

8. The system of claim 7, wherein the Bluetooth compliant medical slave device comprises a foot pedal switch.

9. The system of claim 7, wherein the Bluetooth pairing utility comprises a graphical user interface for managing Bluetooth device discovery and authentication.

10. The system of claim 9, wherein the exclusive pairing utility further comprises a graphical user interface for managing the configuration and operation of exclusively connected non-fixed slave devices.

11. The system of claim 7, wherein the controller comprises master device functionality capable of transmitting information to and receiving information from the Bluetooth compliant medical slave device.

12. The system of claim 7, wherein the Bluetooth compliant medical slave device includes Bluetooth slave device functionality capable of transmitting information to and receiving information from the medical controller.

13. The system of claim 7, wherein the instrument host and controller are configured to exclusively pair the instrument host to a plurality of slave devices having Bluetooth functionality.

14. A method for providing exclusive Bluetooth communication between a medical instrument host controller and a medical device, comprising:

establishing a Bluetooth communications path between the medical instrument host controller and the medical device;

forming an exclusive communications path between said medical instrument host controller and only said medical device using a unique address obtained from the medical device by the medical instrument host controller when said unique address matches a instrument host controller address.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein the Bluetooth communications path is formed in accordance with a Bluetooth discovery and authentication specification.

16. The method of claim 14, wherein the forming further comprises sending the unique address from the medical device over a wireless network in response to queries from the medical instrument host controller.

17. The method of claim 14, wherein forming the exclusive communications path further comprises comparing the unique address stored in the medical device to the instrument host controller address to determine if a match condition exists.

18. The method of claim 14, wherein said Bluetooth master and slave devices form an exclusive communications path when the unique address acquired from the medical device is found by the medical instrument host controller to be an identical match the instrument host controller address.

19. The method of claim 14, further comprising explicitly un-pairing medical device from the medical instrument host controller when the unique address acquired from the medical device is found by the medical instrument host controller to not match the instrument host controller address.

20. The method of claim 14, wherein pairing devices enables a master-slave communications path to connect a single master device to a single slave device.

21. The method of claim 14, wherein the Bluetooth master device further establishes a single exclusive pairing with a single slave device at any one time.