Ventilator terminology is often confusing.  Different manufacturers call the same ventilator function by different names.       A named ventilation mode on one ventilator interacts differently with the patient than one another ventilator using the same mode.  Educators have difficulty teaching and evaluating students because of the wide range of meanings for the same term.  Student and clinician responses vary due to their experience with a particular ventilator during their day to day practice.  

Some of the inspiration and feedback came from the participants of the 2014 AAMI/FDA Summit who were presented with some of the ideas that were eventually part of the standard.

Creating a Culture of Safety –Priority Issues from the 2014 AAMI/FDA Summit on Ventilator Technology

ISO 19223 Lung Ventilator Vocabulary and Semantics  was developed over a 10 year period to try to solve these difficulties.  The purpose of this website is to provide a framework to the thinking behind the terms for students, clinicians and manufacturers and to provide the context and illustrations so that one can understand the terms–rather than reading them in a dictionary-like format  as in the link below

The terms and the definitions can be found at ISO Online Browsing Platform

We are greatly appreciative of the manufacturers, engineers, human factors specialists, researchers, students and clinicians that took part in this endeavor.

Steven Dain MD, FRCPC
Norman S. Jones PhD