Patent ID: 8156384

Claim:
A method for administering error messages having addressable access to device variables comprising: providing a plurality of CANOpen medical apparatuses and interfacing said CANOpen medical apparatuses to communicate with each other according to the CANOpen standard via a CANOpen bus; configuring said CANOpen medical apparatuses with an electronic device configuration file according to the CANOpen standard, and extending said device configuration file to include a message object therein and message object parameters associated with the message object, to produce an extended device configuration file; importing of the message object with the associated message object parameters from the extended device configuration file into the CANOpen medical apparatuses at a time selected from the group consisting of a time at which each of said CANOpen medical apparatuses is started, an automatically selected time, and a time designated by a user-implemented input into each of said CANOpen medical apparatuses; intercepting an error message at one of said CANOpen medical apparatuses when the error message occurs at said one of said CANOpen medical apparatuses; parameterizing the intercepted error message in one of said CANOpen medical apparatuses using the imported message object parameters of the message object to produce a parameterized error message; and automatically electronically responding to the error message by administering the parameterized error message.