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Why we need standards-based interoperability in digital health

A vision for “e-health” is gathering around the world, in which a rich array of […]

A vision for “e-health” is gathering around the world, in which a rich array of dependable data is seamlessly and securely shared between patient and healthcare providers, in support of breakthrough wellness care and remote monitoring capabilities. Global, open development and wide-scale adoption of interoperability standards across technology areas such as personal health device communications, cloud computing, body computing, mobility, social networking and Big Data analytics comprise a critical enabler of the vision.

In the emerging standards-based environment for e-health, caregivers are being enabled to continually maintain a comprehensive assessment of a person’s status as it evolves in making and carrying out clinical decisions. A secure stream of accurate biometric data (beat-by-beat blood-pressure monitoring, for example) would allow physicians to steadily monitor a patient’s condition in real time—wherever that individual happens to be, moment to moment as he or she goes about a daily routine.

This is a significant change from the traditional scenario in which clinical decisions are informed by a limited set of vital signs and other data that can be collected during the patient’s short visits to hospitals, doctor offices, etc. A standards-based environment of e-health promises monumental benefits in terms of improved quality of care, including:

  • Expanded access to medical records and biometric data for better-informed decision making
  • Streamlined conversion of raw patient data into actionable insights
  • Reduction in risks of medical errors, misdiagnosis and mistreatments

By supporting enhanced monitoring wellness and encouraging preventive healthcare, the globally emerging e-health capability figures to help more individuals—individuals who in some cases are living with chronic diseases such as asthma, diabetes, congestive heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases, high blood pressure, stroke and atrial fibrillation—lead longer, healthier and happier lives. Both the connected person’s period of being not well and associated costs throughout the healthcare process would be reduced.

The benefits of interoperability standards for e-health are varied and profound. And, indeed, the recognition of the growing importance of interoperability standards for e-health is increasingly shared. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, for example, recently began recognizing interoperability-related standards in its guidance to the healthcare industry. 

Standards for e-health, said Dr. Alexander Kraus, therapy manager with Biotronik Health Services of Germany, said, “translate into far-ranging benefits, such as potentially reducing clinical decision-making from days to minutes, assisting consumers to independently manage their own health, reducing gaps and errors across the spectrum of healthcare delivery and helping to expand the potential market for the medical devices themselves.”

Such benefits are much harder and more expensive to achieve without a standards-based framework for interoperability across multi-vendor devices and systems. Enabling end-to-end data exchange and analysis across personal health devices via non-standard, proprietary interfaces, technologies and systems is fragmented, complex and costly. And because data capture is incomplete, blind spots are introduced in terms of assessing the patient’s condition; care, consequently, suffers.

Furthermore, widely adopted, globally scoped interoperability standards have a proven history in varied technology spaces of fueling market growth and driving innovation. When developed via a balanced process that prevents any one company from wielding undue influence, global standards reduce the cost for all manufacturers of any size or region to enter markets and develop products within a globally scoped market ecosystem of interoperable systems. Manufacturers cost-effectively leverage shared intellectual property and concentrate research-and-development spending, instead, on differentiating on innovation and honing their product offerings to address the specific needs of their customers.

The IEEE Standards Association provides a global platform for e-health stakeholders across regions and technologies to openly collaborate and build consensus, and the fruit of such efforts is a rapidly expanding framework of interoperability standards for e-health. And because no single organization could possibly develop, refine and maintain all of the standards demanded in the world’s advancing e-health environment, global cooperation and collaboration are taking shape among standards-development organizations across pre-standards research, formal standards development and market implementation.

The result is intensifying market deployment of unprecedented capabilities in remote care, wellness monitoring and telemedicine around the world, and ongoing development of global interoperability standards for e-health will spur even greater innovations in the decades ahead.


Bill Ash

Bill Ash is strategic program director for the IEEE Standards Association (IEEE-SA). He received his BSEE from Rutgers University School of the Engineering. His background is in the RF industry as he worked as applications engineer on wireless communications systems.

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