Continua: An Interoperable Personal Healthcare Ecosystem

The healthcare industry must improve its delivery methods and reduce costs to address current and anticipated needs. Various technologies could help by extending treatment and care beyond traditional clinical settings into personal and home settings. However, creating such a personal telehealth ecosystem will require interoperability. Device connectivity to enterprise services is currently very proprietary. In an effort to develop interoperability guidelines for the emerging personal telehealth ecosystem, we formed the Continua Health Alliance (www.continuaalliance.org), an international alliance of more than 133 companies. The guidelines will be based on a comprehensive set of industry standards, which will serve as a blueprint for integrating a product into the ecosystem.