The ITEA 2 project AIMES, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), was a collaborative initiative by German and Spanish companies, universities and research institutes. The intention of the project was to lay down the fundamentals for the optimisation of facility and service management processes for medical equipment within a clinical environment. This optimisation targeted management processes within the hospital as well as the co-ordination with external service providers and manufacturers of medical equipment. This was achieved by application of up-to-date research results and by work on related computer, mathematics and network science domains such as Service Oriented Architecture – SOA, secure and safe communication, agent technology and smart items such as RFID intended for overall facility management and equipment life cycle support and tracking.
