Continua Inside
National Healthcare IT Week passed with little national media notice. What did capture some headlines was a new industry standard group called Continua Health Alliance. Twenty-two technology and health companies have come together to promote standards in home care technology for remote monitoring and transmission to providers.
This will enable the vendors to sell more product to a growing market of aging baby boomers that will tax hospital capacity. Vendors include Cisco, Intel, IBM, GE Healthcare, Kaiser Permanente, Medtronic, Motorola, Partners Healthcare, Phillips, Samsung and others. Intel is chairing the alliance; certified vendors will get a logo on their products, echoing Intel's ubiquitous label.
This is a logical standard, if not self serving, and will join the many other standards already proposed for different aspects of healthcare IT such as EMR. Some vendors are grumbling about too many standards (particularly CCHIT), but if everything from light bulbs to cars have to pass certification and standards it seems that the technology involved in healthcare certainly needs it.
Tags: Healthcare+PR, Homecare, Online+PRPosted by Shawn Whalen on June 12, 2006 at 1:03 PM
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The Continua Health Alliance is an international organization and will utilize internationally recognized standards for device and service interoperability. Continua is not a standards body, but will select existing standards and wrap them with guidelines to achieve tight interoperability. Look for Bluetooth, USB, ASTM CCR, IEEE 1073, HL7 and many other standards to be part of the Continua Guidelines.
Posted by: David Whitlinger | June 17, 2006 6:23 PM