OpenICE – OpenSource ICE Reference Implementation

The MD PnP Program developed an open-source reference implementation of the Integrated Clinical Environment (ICE) standard as published as AAMI 2700-1 (which had been previously published as ASTM 2761-09), initially under an NIH/NIBIB Quantum “Medical Moonshot” U01 award. The platform consists of software adapters for a wide variety of medical devices (such as infusion pumps, ventilators, and patient monitors), and device and patient simulation capabilities, running on a platform using the Real-Time Innovations (RTI) implementation of the OMG-standard Data Distribution Service (DDS) for real-time systems. RTI Connext supports distributed platform services such as data logging and data quality monitoring, and a variety of demonstration applications.

Novel applications enabled by interoperability between medical devices and apps on an ICE platform, such as smart alarms, physiologic closed-loop control algorithms, data visualization, AI-enabled applications, and clinical research data collection, can be rapidly prototyped with OpenICE.

OpenICE is being used globally by academic researchers and manufactures to reduce the time and cost of developing research implementations.

MD PnP Content on GitHub

The MD PnP GitHub public project was established to share code and documentation developed by the Medical Device Plug-and-Play program and its collaborators with the broader community. This open-source project provides an opportunity to access artifacts produced by our program. (Note – The OpenICE project has been hosted by several open-source repositories since 2012. It was transitioned to GitHub in June 2015.)

Available OpenICE GitHub artifacts include implementations of protocols used to connect to medical devices, as well as implementations of user interfaces, messaging infrastructure, and data models.  Collaborators are using the site to communicate and share code.

RTI Connext in OpenICE

RTI permits us to include RTI Connext run-time libraries in OpenICE, which provides the platform with secure network middleware complying with the OMG DDS standard. RTI offers an academic / university license program which provides access to a range of content and tools that facilitate building, testing, integrating, and deploying high-performance, mission critical, distributed systems.