Project Hydra Implements New Telecare Standards
Telecare, telehealth and assisted living are terms used for technologies that allow information about people’s health and well-being to be transmitted to others. The recipients can be healthcare professionals, family members and other carers.
This is a new area of technology with evolving standards, being established to ensure interoperability between personal health devices and computer systems. Some of these standards are being tested by Project Hydra. The software diagram below shows the structure we are implementing, and the building blocks are explained below.
IEEE 11073 Personal Health Devices
The IEEE 11073-20601 family of standards defines the data objects and the messages exchanged between personal health devices (such as weighing scales and blood pressure monitors used in the Project Hydra demonstrations) and a nearby computing device (electricity meter in the Project Hydra demonstrations).
Continua Alliance and the ZigBee Healthcare Profile
The ZigBee low-power radio network can carry different kinds of messages – energy and health data being two examples. The ZigBee Healthcare Profile (ZHP) encapsulates the IEEE 11073 messages and delivers them over the ZigBee transport network. Continua Alliance is an open industry organization of personal healthcare and technology companies. It has adopted the ZigBee Healthcare Profile, so the Project Hydra health devices are compliant with their specifications.
Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise: IHE-PCD01
The smart meter sends its data as IHE-PCD01 messages through the smart meter communications channels to medical professionals at Chorleywood Health Centre. IHE (Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise) is an initiative by healthcare professionals and industry to improve the way computer systems in healthcare share information. Their PCD01 (Patient Care Device) standard, based on HL7, is the newly emerging standard message format for transferring personal health data over the WAN (Wide Area Network).