Improving Medical Device Interoperability

Health care is at the top of the political agenda these days, and the technology community is playing a huge role in shaping the future of this vital industry. To promote technologies that enable proactive personal health management, several technology, medical device, and health care industry leaders from around the world formed the Continua Health Alliance. The mission of the alliance is to establish a system of interoperable personal telehealth solutions that fosters independence and empowers individuals and organizations to better manage health and wellness. This nonprofit open industry coalition was formed in June 2006 and now has more than 200 members.

The group’s objectives include:

• Developing design guidelines that will enable vendors to build interoperable sensors, home networks, telehealth platforms, and health and wellness services
• Establishing a product certification program with a consumer-recognizable logo signifying interoperability across certified products
• Collaborating with government regulatory agencies to provide methods for safely and effectively managing diverse products
• Working with health care industry leaders to address the costs of providing personal telehealth systems

The Continua Health Alliance has created a set of design guidelines containing references to the standards and specifications that Continua selected for ensuring device interoperability. These guidelines focus on two interfaces: PAN-IF, the interface to personal area network health devices, and xHRN-IF, the interface that connects disease management services, WAN devices (xHR senders), and electronic health record devices (xHR receivers).

The alliance recently made its Version One Design Guidelines available to the public for purchase at its website and announced the first products to be designed and certified to these guidelines.

MIPI Alliance www.mipi.org

The Mobile Industry Processor Interface (MIPI) Alliance is an open membership organization composed of leading companies in the mobile industry that share the objective of defining and promoting open specifications for interfaces in mobile terminals. MIPI specifications establish standards for Hardware and software interfaces typically found in mobile terminal systems. By defining such standards and encouraging their adoption throughout the industry value chain, the MIPI Alliance intends to reduce fragmentation and improve interoperability among system components, benefiting the entire mobile industry.

As these standards are implemented in mobile device technology, the industry will gain several advantages including improved interconnection among cell phones, handheld computers, digital cameras, and other multimedia devices; higher data exchange rates; traffic prioritization; greater adaptability and interoperability of devices from different vendors; and more cost- and power-efficient mobile terminals.

The new MIPI Alliance specifications include:

• Unified Protocol (UniProSM) v1.00.00
• Display Serial Interface (DSI) v1.01.00
• Processor Interface Emulation (PIE) v0.90.00
• Dual Mode 2.5G/3G Baseband/RFIC Interface v3.09.04 (DigRFSM)
• Device Descriptor Block (DDB) v0.82.01
• Serial Low-power Inter-chip Media Bus (SLIMbusSM) v1.01.00
• System Power Management Interface (SPMI) v1.00.00

“With the growing trends of advanced long-term evolution technology and increased integration of new applications into mobile devices, MIPI’s importance in the Wireless world is becoming obvious,” says Will Strauss, president and principal analyst of electronics market research firm Forward Concepts. “The need for interoperability among several vendors is highlighted as wireless operators continue to seek the best available products at competitive prices. MIPI Alliance specifications provide certainty in interfacing among vendors.”