Patent ID: 8060576

Claim:
A computer-implemented method of communicating with a client system over a network, the method comprising: receiving, by a network device and from the client system over the network using a first protocol, an email message comprising a command; formatting the received email message so that the command can be communicated to a medical apparatus using a second protocol; transmitting the command to the medical apparatus, wherein the network device is physically connected to the medical apparatus; receiving a response from the physically connected medical apparatus after the physically connected medical apparatus has processed the command; generating a response email message comprising the received response; generating a report related to the received response; and transmitting the response email message and the report to the client system over the network; wherein elements or functions may be executed out of order from that shown or discussed including substantially concurrently or in reverse order, depending on the functionality involved; and wherein three layers of ASCII based security based measures may be used: the first layer may relate to cryptographic hash functions, such as MD5; the second level may relate to data blocking and stuffing; the third level may relate to private-key stream ciphering.