Auriga is proud to announce that it has become a member of the OR.NET e.V. association, a non-profit organization committed to the international standardization and manufacturer-independent networking of medical devices. By joining the association aimed at safe, secure, and dynamic device-to-device interoperability, Auriga has strengthened its position as a leading provider of medical software development and testing services.

OR.NET started as a research project commissioned by Germany’s Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The concepts for integrating operating room technologies developed in the project have become the core of the Service-oriented Device Connectivity (SDC) standard. Integration of medical equipment in a network within the OR, ICU, or ER represents considerable added value to physicians, surgeons, and anesthetists. It helps improve the availability of clinical information, drive insight-based decision making, optimize workflows, mitigate the risk of alarm fatigue, and increase patient safety.

Before SDC, point-of-care devices with network capability would connect to their own proprietary networks only. The lack of device interoperability and respective standards was one of the top barriers to improving the quality of acute care delivery and achieving better clinical outcomes. Now, with SDC, a manufacturer-independent interoperable future of medical devices has become possible. SDC ensures secure interoperability among point-of-care medical devices and data exchange between point-of-care devices and HL7-compatible clinical and hospital information systems.

In 2019, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) added the three core standards of the IEEE 11073 SDC family to the list of “Recognized Consensus Standards.” In 2020, the architecture and binding standard became an official ISO standard, ISO/IEEE 11073-20701:2020, and the whole group of SDC Core Standards was approved and published by the ISO. Today, OR.NET is working on venturing outside of Europe and getting international companies to adopt and conform to the standard. Manufacturers from the U.S., Canada, and Japan are increasingly interested in making their products integrable.

The OR.NET membership benefits Auriga by offering support in implementing the new SDC standard in medical software development projects for its clients worldwide and an opportunity to influence further standard elaboration. Having access to demos, OR.NET members can assess added value early on in a realistic environment. Moreover, OR.NET members can participate in workshops and marketing activities and contact medical device manufacturers, researchers, and clinical partners.

Andrey Shastin, Technology and Business Partnering Executive at Auriga, commented:

“Auriga has accumulated more than 15 years’ experience in software development for medical devices. Over these years, Auriga’s engineering teams have performed dozens of interoperability research and development projects for embedded and system-level software for the medical device industry. We are pleased to become a part of OR.NET, which is at the forefront of medical device connectivity. The OR.NET membership represents a new step Auriga has taken to deliver integrated and interoperable yet safe and secure software solutions for the medical devices and IT systems of its customers, including world-leading medical equipment manufacturers.”