Context-aware medical technologies - Relief or burden for clinical users?

Abstract

The open, cross-vendor interoperability of medical devices is an enabling technology for the implementation of context-aware biomedical systems in daily clinical routine. The surgical working environment is both a valuable field of application and a particular challenge. A design of context-aware medical technologies that shows intelligent behaviour and ensures safe operation is demanding; thus implementations are yet limited to prototypes and specific surgical use cases. Many open research questions need to be addressed to empower context-aware medical systems to be a relief and not a burden for the clinical user.