The aging population of the West has opened a new booming profitable market: E-health. Nevertheless, it’s not only about the elderly, there are chronic diseases (diabetes, heart diseases, etc.), where 24/7 monitoring is of utmost importance, and also staying fit equipment for those striving to improve their figure. However, e-health has proven to be an ongoing crusade for the healthcare policymakers. While attempts are being made to achieve an integrated European e-health market, since the technology is available so as to secure state-of-the-art user friendly products, the actual results are far from ideal – a few independent solutions introduced by remote companies.
The slow progress can be attributed to the medical fact that different systems used in healthcare perform measurements but cannot communicate results in a format known by other devices or by the ever non-existent databases. Such systems/devices should be able to connect to different measurement devices like blood pressure monitors, weighing scales, glucose meters, pulse oximeters, ECG monitors, peak flow meters, etc. The problem intervenes when data from the measurement set should be transported to a processing unit; this problem is not necessarily related to the transport medium (Bluetooth, USB, Infrared, serial cable) cause this can be easily fixed but also the encoding over the channel becomes an issue. Once again, it becomes obvious that standards are important.
As I mentioned here And there was the need for interoperability I will focus more on the de facto standards, therefore, I will talk about an organization which deals with the standardization process for the personal healthcare: The Continua Health Alliance. This is a non-profit, open industry organization where healthcare and technology companies work towards achieving better personal healthcare products. It all started in 2006 after various players on the market came to the conclusion that they needed to work together if innovation and profit through innovation was to be adopted in the healthcare world. Companies among which BodyMedia, Cisco Systems, GE Healthcare, IBM, Intel, Kaiser Permanente, Medtronic, Motorola, Nonin Medical, Omron Healthcare, Panasonic, Partners HealthCare, Polar Electro, Royal Philips Electronics, RMD Networks, Samsung Electronics, Sharp, The Tunstall Group, Welch Allyn and Zensys decided to form a working group so as to achieve an ecosystem of connected personal health and fitness products and services. With more than 230 member companies nowadays, Continua is dedicated to establishing a system of interoperable personal connected health solutions.
Continua is not a regular standards body since its aim is to improve health management, make interoperable devices and doing so, not by just selecting standards and writing guidelines on how to use that particular standard, but also by involving itself in other regulatory standards bodies. In addition, the organization puts effort into overcoming the barriers of the market in all three aspects: technical, regulatory and financial.
It has several working groups among which The Marketing Group is focused increasing the collaboration by getting new members (providers & payers in the medical/personal healthcare industry), the Technical Working Group which evaluates existing standards against requirements in order to identify gaps and take steps to reconcile, the Use Case Group which is responsible for identifying and prioritizing user experiences to be addressed by the Continua Interoperability Guidelines, the Market Adoption Group which establishes a value proposition for innovative connected health solutions that effectively manage the health, wellness, and fitness of the health consumer by using Continua-certified solutions and systems, the Regulatory Group which is responsible with the clarification and description of interoperable devices functions in a regulatory environment, the Test & Certification Group which creates and maintain the Test and Certification Program for Continua Health Alliance. - Continua Alliance
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