A universal medical device driver adapter that enables the creation of medical device drivers without the need to write custom software for typical medical devices, thereby reducing development time for individual drivers and reducing training time and skill sets requirements of driver developers. Various format parameters are defined, such as baud rate, parity, buffer size, time stamps, tokens, message link, and the like, in an XML device driver file. When a recognized medical device is specified, the corresponding XML file is retrieved and an interface uses the parameters described therein for bidirectional communication with the monitor.