Onboard tagging for smart medical devices

Most medical devices are `dumb:´ their role is to acquire, display, and forward data. They make few if any operational decisions based on those data. Onboard tagging is a means whereby a device can embed information about itself, its data, and the sensibility of those data into its data stream. This diagnostic add-on offers a move toward `smart´ devices that will have the ability to affect changes in operational modes based on onboard contextual decision making, such as decisions to avoid needless wireless transmission of corrupt data. This paper presents a description of three types of onboard tags that relate to device hardware (type I tag), signal statistics (type II tag), and signal viability for the intended application (type III tag). A custom wireless pulse oximeter is presented as a use case to show how type II and III tags that convey photoplethysmogram (PPG) statistics and usability specifiers can be calculated and embedded into the data stream without degrading performance.