Fusion, a connectivity platform, which allows the system to communicate with different medical instruments, uses dedicated translation objects for translation of instrument messages. Instrument Protocol Translation Objects, or Protocol Messaging Definition Objects (PMDOs), define the physical and message layer languages that instruments use in order to communicate with the system. Electronic communication consists of two main parts:
1) Physical layer - the signals that are sent between communicating devices, including control signals, content (data itself), and various validation signals. The information that is sent is usually split into small packets or frames, which is composed later into a single buffer. The physical layer defines the rules of those compositions and is unique to every protocol. Note that several physical layers can be defined for one protocol in order to accommodate different connection-specific requirements of the instrument.
2) Message layer - each device stores and manages information in its own unique way. When data is transferred between devices (using the physical layer), the common language between various devices is the message layer. The content sent between various instruments is parsed into meaningful, predefined fields so it can be further processed and used.
The PMDO designer allows creating translation objects for these two layers.
The user can be actively involved in creating and modifying the final XML file that will be representing the message received from the instrument, in a readable way that is preferred and defined by the user using the Message layer tab in the Protocol Designer window. The user can also modify the dynamics by which the message is transferred from the instrument to the system, using the Physical layer tab.