NIST/ITL is collaborating with the ISO/IEEE 11073 Medical Device Communications working group in developing
developing conformance tests and associated tools to provide the medical device industry with the necessary tools
to ensure that critical devices properly implement the medical device standards. As part of this effort
NIST has developed a tool called ValidatePDU, to validate the basic syntax and structure of messages.
Figure 1. ValidatePDU Process
Figure 1 above shows the process used by the ValidatePDU tool. Step one was to convert the Abstract Syntax Notation(ASN.1)
from the ISO/IEEE 11073 standards into schema definitions. The schema definitions are then used to validate
XML wrapped messages passed between manager and agent medical devices. The ValidatePDU tool will report
such things as incorrect syntax and data type errors. The ValidatePDU tool is a work-in-progress and
suggestions and comments about the tool are welcome. The tool is freely available for download (disclaimer) and can
be obtained by clicking on the Download link on the left side of the screen.
