The Conceptual Modeling of Interoperability Framework of Heart Sound Monitor (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Heart sound monitor (HSM), a device suitable for home-use, can be used to record heart sounds and to store, transmit or analyze those recordings. It enables cardiac reserve telemonitoring which has been largely evolved and widely used in recent years. Nevertheless, the designers of HSM paid little attention to the consistency of its information model and data interaction, and because of that, the collected heart sounds data could not be shared and aggregated effectively. Thus, the device’s development and its application in telehealth service are hindered. OBJECTIVE In order to solve the above problem and to build interoperability for HSM devices, this paper proposes a HSM interoperability framework that is composed of the hierarchical information model and the transport-independent interaction model, which is constructed by using standardized modeling methods. METHODS The authors collected and studied the common device-output information of HSM involved in the cardiac reserve telemonitoring, leveraged the standardized interoperability framework defined in ISO/IEEE 11073 Personal Health Device (11073-PHD) standards to model the static data structure and dynamic interaction behaviors of HSM. RESULTS Via the meta analysis, the authors identified that the common device-output information of HSM mainly includes the phonocardiogram (PCG), the feature parameters of PCG, the ratio of diastolic to systolic duration (D/S), for example, and the threshold data, device status, sensor location, etc. Based on such information, an 11073-PHD-compliant domain information model has been successfully created. This enables the interoperability between HSM and aggregation device, allowing inter-device plug&play using service model and communication model. A prototype of this design has been implemented and validated via the Continua Enabling Software Library. CONCLUSIONS The ISO/IEEE 11073-PHD standard framework has the potential to accommodate the HSM device. The standard-compliant domain information models can be established to cover the common HSM device-output information. Findings in this paper may be taken as a reference for standard developing organizations to establish a standardized interoperability framework for HSM.