About MFER

Medical waveforms such as Electrocardiogram, Electroencephalogram, Blood pressure waveform, etc., is widely utilized at clinical area for a physiological examination, an electronic medical record and many purpose, such as investigation, research, education, etc.. Medical waveform is used by various combinations in various forms for a purpose or an intention. For example, ECG is very utilized medical waveform in clinical arena, and resting 12 lead ECG is used waveform most, in particular. A cardiologist makes diagnosis the ECG usually measured for ten to fifteen seconds, however more long period sometimes needs to grasp the patient heart condition like an arrhythmia. Also there are many other method using ECG such as Holter ECG, monitoring ECG, stress ECG, intracardiac ECG, VCG, EEG with ECG, blood pressure with ECG, PSG and so on. MFER can describe not only ECG for physiological examination, ICU and operating room, etc., but also EEG, Respiration waveform, pulse waveform, blood pressure and so on.

(1). Simple and easy

MFER specialized a representation for medical waveform and removed unnecessary tags for waveform description, basically. For example, standard 12 lead ECG can be described as simple as possible only using common sampling condition, lead condition, so become easy to synchronize waveforms and for calculation of leads correctly.

(2). Using with other appropriate standards

It is recommended that MFER only describes medical waveforms and other information should be used with other appropriate standards such as HL7, DICOM, IEEE, etc., because MFER is specialized to waveform. A patient demographics, order information, medication, etc. should be described in other outstanding standard such as HL7 with a medical waveform described in MFER. This means that implementation for message exchange, networking, database management, etc. becomes simple and easy.

(3).Separation between supplier and consumer of medical waveforms

Almost waveform standard concentrates on format instead of paper base recording. For example, ECG standard for 12 lead ECG is focused on view format like ECG paper recording. Namely, recorded ECG is processed by filter, data alignment and others, so ECG can be displayed easily for ECG viewer. However, it is not useful for other purpose such as data processing for an investigation in research area in many cases. The policy of MFER is that a waveform should be described in raw format with details associated information as possible at the recording, and the waveform is processed in adequate format for the own purpose when it is used. When the waveform is used, adequate processing for the waveform is processed like filtering, view alignment and so on. The medical waveform described in MFER in this way can be used for multiple purposes.

(4). It is not sacrificed the feature of the product.

Almost standards requires just fit minimum requirement, so feature of products is sacrificed. MFER can describe medical waveform information without sacrificing the feature of the product. Also, There are many exception for medical waveform description. MFER has mechanism of not only machine readable with coded system for abstract data, but also human readable description.

It is preferable to be used according to the following basic policy when this standard is implemented,.

Don't disturb good feature of each product by according with MFER specification. MFER can easily translate stored data to new data in MFER, current data including future new waveform is descreibed in MFER. Harmonaization with other standartd is important that the waveform is easily translagted from written in other standard.