Webinar: Medical devices need standard treatment

Standardizing information exchange among medical devices may seem like an impossible challenge, but Charles Parker, executive director of Continua Health Alliance, said his organization wants to get the industry to move in the same direction. Parker described the need for device standards and some progress during a National eHealth Collaborative Webinar on May 20.

Continua, a not-for-profit alliance based in Beaverton, Ore., was formed in 2006 to advocate for a common set of international standards among medical devices. It aims to establish an ecosystem of interoperable personal healthcare systems, said Parker. “We use an interface and standards approach [for] this. We don’t create standards; we select well-defined standards in the industry.”

Personal healthcare systems enable patients to self-monitor and provide data to clinicians and others when needed. Even the chronic care patient today spends only 2 percent of his or her time with a physician or clinician throughout the year, said Parker. For the other 98 percent of the time, healthcare can be more effective “if we have ways to measure and capture data and have teachable moments based on what those data mean,” he said.

Continua focuses in this area to ensure devices meet certain quality for capturing and passing information.

“If we provide individuals with the right tools at the right time, they can take that information and hopefully modify their lifestyle to stay healthier longer,” Parker said.

There is increasing evidence that supports the value of personal-connected healthcare, Parker explained. “Remote monitoring has already generated a 35 to 56 percent reduction in congestive heart failure mortality rates “because we can see what’s happening with an individual faster,” he said. “We’re also seeing a significant decrease in length of hospitalization.”

Although these results are promising, they could be more widespread and benefit more conditions with standards in place. “We use an interface and standards approach to this. For personal devices, we impose a burden as lightweight as possible from a technology perspective," such as the ISO IEEE specification 11073, personal healthcare devices nomenclature to define how each device can interoperate, said Parker. ISO device specifications are international in scope, so companies don’t need to redesign devices for individual countries, he added

Continua also is working to develop standards that transform information from devices into a standard nomenclature that “that EHRs can consume and plug into,” said Parker. The alliance has demonstrated how standardized information can connect directly to GoogleHealth personal helth records (PHRs), Microsoft HealthVault and Dossia’s service, he added.

On back end, the data can go directly into health records network interface devices, allowing compatibility with health information exchanges and personal health records as well as EHRs. "We’re working closely with the Nationwide Health Information Network and NeHC to make sure that data flow effectively into national records as well," said Parker.

Continua has defined 12 device specifications; possibly 20 more could be added in next two years "as a path out of high-cost, locked proprietary systems in the end-to-end ecosystem," he added.

Continua includes 235 global members, some of which are head-to-head competitors. “If you can get everybody together to set a standard, it encourages all models to be successful,” Parker said.