Questions and Answers:
Q1. What is the Continua Health
Alliance?
A1.The Continua Health Alliance is a group of technology, healthcare and fitness companies dedicated to establishing an ecosystem of connected personal health and fitness products and services, making it possible for patients, caregivers and health care providers to more proactively address ongoing health care needs.
Q2. Who are the founding members of Continua Health Alliance? Why are they involved, and what do they each bring to this effort?
A2. Founding members of the group include BodyMedia, Cisco Systems, GE Healthcare, IBM, Intel, Kaiser Permanente, Medtronic, Motorola, Nonin, Omron Healthcare, Panasonic, Partners HealthCare, Polar Electro, Royal Philips Electronics, RMD Networks, Samsung Electronics, Sharp, The Tunstall Group, Welch Allyn and Zensys. All members of the group share a vision of establishing an ecosystem of connected personal health and fitness products and services, making it possible for patients, caregivers and health care providers to more proactively address ongoing health care needs.
Q3. Isn’t this just another standards body? If it is not a standards body, what is it and how is it different?
A3. This is not a standards body. The Alliance has selected version one connectivity standards and is working to identify and resolve gaps in some standards bodies so that personal telehealth solutions are interoperable and contribute toward improved health management. Additionally, the Alliance is writing guidelines on specifically how to use the standards to achieve true interoperability across many companies and many devices.
Q4. What exactly is Continua promising to deliver?
A4. The Continua Health Alliance will establish an ecosystem of connected personal health and fitness products and services, making it possible for patients, caregivers and health care providers to more proactively address ongoing healthcare needs. The Alliance is creating design guidelines that are based on proven connectivity standards. The Continua Alliance is also creating a product certification logo program with a consumer recognizable logo signifying the promise of interoperability with other certified products.
Q5.Can health care costs be reduced by the output of the Continua Health Alliance?
A5. Continua Health Alliance is working to provide interoperable devices and services for three categories of use cases: Health and Wellness, Chronic Disease Management and Aging Independently. Cost savings for health care providers and consumers can be realized differently depending on the use case:
- Health and Wellness: Obesity is rising rapidly with an estimate of over 1 billion clinically obese individuals worldwide. Obesity leads to all of the major chronic diseases (diabetes and heart related diseases) and these diseases account for 75-85% of the total health care costs. The Continua Health Alliance is developing connectivity and interoperability Guidelines for fitness equipment, heart rate monitors, pedometers, weight scales, internet diet services, internet fitness coaching services and dozens of other devices and services yet to be thought of. These tools will help individuals to manage their weight and general health thereby warding off costly chronic diseases.
- Chronic Disease Management: Chronic diseases account for 75-85% of the total health care spend in total health care costs. One of the ways to mitigate some of the costs associated with chronic disease is to help the patient maintain stable vitals, stick to the medication regime, and quickly respond to any changes in vitals before they result in a costly emergency or trauma. Needless to say, through better monitoring, a higher quality of life for the patient and their loved ones is also enjoyed.
- Aging Independently:As the world population grows older, the number of individuals requiring some form of assisted living is continuing to increase. Some estimates indicate that we will not be able to manage the impending wave of elderly individuals with the current or planned facilities. One of the ways to reduce the burden and improve the overall quality of life is to provide elderly individuals and their loved ones with tools to help them age more gracefully in the comfort of their own home. By providing non-obtrusive monitoring and simple daily coaching from remote loved ones, an elderly individual may live in their home for a longer period of time thereby warding off expensive assisted living costs.
Q6. Are there other similar consortium efforts going?
A6.Not that we know of for personal telehealth. There is an organization for clinical medical devices used in hospitals called Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE). They follow a similar process but their focus is on medical imaging devices, radiology, cardiology, and HIT. Continua is the only industry enablement organization focused on personal health care and wellness devices and services.
Q7. Why is interoperability important?
A7.The rise of chronic conditions and the rapid aging of the population are driving a need to shift healthcare from traditional institutional settings to people's everyday environments, including the home. To enable this shift, a group of technology and healthcare companies formed the Continua Health Alliance, an open industry group established to create an ecosystem of connected personal health products and services, making it possible for patients, caregivers and healthcare providers to more proactively address ongoing healthcare needs.
Q8. Is this alliance really
necessary?
A8. The Continua Health Alliance has an opportunity to dramatically affect the quality of life of millions of people worldwide. By helping to provide patients, caregivers and healthcare providers with the products and services they need to proactively manage their health and fitness, we can improve quality of life and healthcare and lower healthcare costs. We believe that through a broad industry collaborative organization, we can combine the talents of many companies to create an interoperable ecosystem of health and fitness devices and services that will empower people to better manage their health and the health of their loved ones.
Q9. What is the logo certification program
and when will this group provide logo certification guidelines?
A9. The Continua Health Alliance is creating a product certification logo program with a consumer recognizable logo signifying the promise of interoperability with other certified products. Products made under the Continua guidelines will provide consumers with increased assurance of interoperability between devices, enabling them to share information with care givers and service providers more easily.
Q10. When will the Continua Health Alliance
agree on the technical guidelines and which standards will be
included?
A10.The Continua design guidelines will not create new networking standards but will be based on proven connectivity standards. Proven connectivity standards that will be considered include Bluetooth®, USB, Wi-Fi™, Z-Wave™ and ZigBee™, among other established transports. The group plans to deliver the Version One Guidelines within the next two quarters.
Q11. When will actual certified products be
available to purchase?
A11. The Continua Health Alliance expects products to be available starting in 2008, but it will be determined by when individual companies make their products available.
