The problem with medical device connectivity is that they don't. Very few medical devices from one manufacturer connect to another and thus intelligent systems of devices cannot be realized. The computer industry has it figure out as illustrated in the diagram below. PhotoShop from Adobe can be loaded onto your Dell Laptop and used to enhance images scanned into the computer by your Cannon scanner or loaded from you Nikon camera or Apple iPhone. They can then be printed on your HP printer or sent to Facebook.

Try doing something like that with medical devices. You'll hardly get the first connection working. This is the problem that medical device "connectologists" are hoping to solve. The reason it works in the computer industry is due to the adoption of standards. Most gadgets connect to your computer by way of USB so when you buy a scanner or camera or printer, you don't have to worry that it will connect to your computer...it just does (at least most of the time). Likewise, Adobe is able to run their software on Windows because of the standard interface to Windows that they provide to third-party software developers. And Adobe knows it's software will recognize your photos because they too are encoded in a standard such as jpeg.

The key is the use of standards. Standards for communication, standards for data representation, and standard interfaces to software.

A solution to the connectivity problem has been proposed by a group led by Dr. Julian Goldman and termed the Integrated Clinical Environment (ICE).