Tuesday, June 6, 2006

On-Site Report: Continua Health Alliance Announced

Filed under: Telemedicine

A group of major companies from areas such as healthcare, information technology, medical devices and wireless, announced a partnership today called the Continua Health Alliance. Medgadget was at the press briefing to bring you the exciting news.

The world of biomedical devices is growing by leaps and bounds. The methods by which these devices communicate with each other, however, are limiting their potential. As one speaker at the conference put it, there is a "dog's breakfast" of options and costs that consumers and healthcare providers are faced with when deciding on a compatible set of devices and IT systems. In addition, healthcare capacity is coming far short of the growing demand.

This is where the Continua Health Alliance comes in. By bringing together all the different levels of healthcare technology, from the device itself up to the healthcare provider, the Alliance plans to create a system of standards using currently available technologies to allow the overwhelming number of available devices to function together seamlessly. Their main focus is to decrease the number of hospital visits necessary that the aging baby boomer population will soon need.

Continua plans on assigning different technologies (i.e: Bluetooth, USB, Wi-Fi, Z-Wave and ZigBee) for different purposes in the biomedical device world. By 2008 you should see products available with the Continua Health Alliance symbol and certification, which lets you know that this device will be compatible with all other Alliance certified products.

Most of this information can be found on their website, but we managed to get a little inside information from Medtronic. While the Continua Health Alliance really seems to be pushing their homecare technology initiative, what you should be looking out for is cellular health technology. With companies like Motorola and Samsung as part of the Alliance, we're sure that some exciting cellular medgadgets are on the way!

Find out more here...

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