Application Development System for Medical Pumps

• US 20170161460A1
• Filed: 12/04/2015
• Published: 06/08/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 12/04/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Zyno Medical, LLC
• Original Assignee: Zyno Medical, LLC
• Inventors: Lee, Chao Young, Zhang, Mei, Yan, James Zhimin
• Granted Patent: US 10,417,389 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 20/17 delivered via infusion or injection

Abstract

An application authoring tool and application program system for medical pumps provides each pump with a standardized hardware interface abstracting the hardware and tasks done by the pump in order to provide a uniform interface for application programmers across different pump types. The standardized interface may translate hardware communication with hardware on different machines, do hardware signal range checking, and handle routine but detailed hardware tasks such as error reporting. A system for installing multiple applications on pumps allows a flexible trade-off between reducing pump programming time by loading specialized application programs and preserving pump flexibility by allowing the user to select among multiple applications.

Claims

1. A medical pump comprising:

a housing;

hardware elements including;

(i) an electrical pump for receiving an line controlling a flow of liquid medicament therethrough;

(ii) one or more sensors for sensing pump and/or line conditions; and

(iii) an electronic user interface providing a display and keyboard;

an electronic memory holding an operating system and application loader program; and

an electronic computer communicating with the hardware elements and electronic memory and executing the operating system and application loader program to;

(1) receive one or more application programs for loading into the electronic memory;

(2) display representations of the application programs on the display for executing by user input to the keyboard;

(3) communicate between the application program and the hardware elements through the operating system, the latter providing a set of standardized hardware interfaces to the hardware elements providing identical abstractions of features of multiple different hardware elements among different medical pumps,

2. The medical pump of claim 1 wherein the set of standardized hardware interfaces include a standard session interface exchanging information between an application program and the hardware elements to coordinate among a pump and at least one sensor for sensing fluid flow to provide a patient treatment session for an individual patient.

3. The medical pump of claim 2 wherein the standard session interface accepts values from an application program of at least one of flow rate and flow volume for medicament delivery.

4. The medical pump of claim 3 wherein the session interface includes a standard error event exchanging information between an application program and the hardware elements to coordinate a stopping of the pump in the event of a predetermined error condition related to the flow of medicament determined by a sensor.

5. The medical pump of claim 4 wherein the application loader program operates to load application programs into the electronic memory only if the application programs include embedded authentication data.

6. The medical pump of claim 5 wherein the embedded authentication data is a digital signature.

7. The medical pump of claim 1 wherein the application loader program operates to load multiple application programs and display the multiple application programs in a hierarchical menu structure on the, display, each application program independently operable to control the medical pump for patient treatment.

8. The medical pump of claim 1 further including a wireless receiver and wherein the application loader program receives application programs wirelessly.

9. The medical pump of claim 1 wherein the application loader program compares the standardized hardware interfaces used by the application program to standardize hardware interfaces available on the medical pump before receiving an application program.

10. The medical pump of claim 1 wherein the standardized hardware interface provides a plurality of software objects associated with the hardware elements, the software objects providing object properties having values describing operation of the hardware elements, object methods having, sequences of steps for controlling the hardware elements, and object events having test conditions receiving information from the hardware elements to trigger outputs to the application programs.

11. The medical pump of claim 10 wherein the software objects include:

a pump object, at least one sensor object, a data logging object, a display object, a keyboard object and an error object.

12. The medical pump of claim 11 wherein the data logger object records a digital signature of the application program.

13. The medical pump of claim 10 wherein the software objects include a session object coordinating the electrical pump and the one or more sensors according to a timer.

14. The medical pump of claim 1 wherein the standardized hardware interface limits the operating conditions of associated hardware elements independently of data received by the application programs.

15. The medical pump of claim 1 wherein the application loader program further operates to remove one or more application programs from the electronic memory.

16. A method of managing a set of infusion pumps having different hardware elements comprising:

(a) generating a set of pump control application programs using a development program for generating output for communicating with standardized hardware interfaces;

(b) loading each infusion pump with an operating program translating communications with the standardized hardware interfaces to specific hardware elements on the infusion pumps;

(c) loading each infusion pump with selected multiple pump control application programs; and

(d) presenting the selected multiple pump control application programs in a menu to a user allowing the user to execute identified ones of the selected multiple pump control application programs for control of each infusion pump.

17. The method of claim 16 wherein the standardized hardware interfaces include a standard session interface coordinating a pump, timer, and at least one fluid sensor to provide a medicament delivery session for an individual patient.

18. The method of claim 17 wherein the application programs include multiple application programs and are displayed in a hierarchical menu structure on the display.

19. The method of claim 18 wherein the application loader program operates to load application programs into the electronic memory only if the application programs include embedded authentication data.