Patent ID: 7430608

Claim:
A method for processing data acquired from multiple medical devices located at one of a plurality of patient bed stations, comprising the activities of: bi-directionally communicating with a plurality of medical devices in automatically acquiring data, including patient related information, and acquisition device type identifier information from one or more of said plurality of medical devices using a communication protocol automatically selected from a plurality of communication protocols associated with different medical devices; incorporating said acquisition device type identifier information derived from acquired data into a message in an Internet compatible format for communication to a remote device; identifying a patient associated with a patient bed station from a database associating patients and patient bed stations; and bi-directionally communicating via a data router with said remote device to convey said acquisition device type identifier information to said remote device in the Internet compatible format message, said data router having a predetermined source Internet communication address usable by said remote device to identify a physical location of said data router and an acquisition device type identifier, associated with said individual medical device and being conveyed in said Internet compatible format message, being usable by said remote device to identify an individual medical device of said plurality of medical devices providing message content to said remote device via said data router in said Internet compatible format message, said data router having a source physical location being determinable from a map associating Internet communication addresses and source physical locations.