Continua Health Alliance Aims To Cure Top Telehealth Industry Challenges

Striving to cure telehealth challenges - including connected health equipment ease-of-deployment, integration of telehealth data into care providers' normal workflow, and meeting changing patient needs - is all in a day's work for the nonprofit Continua Health Alliance. A primary technical focal point for the organization is to enable personal connected health devices' interoperability/plug-and-play connectivity. And, as the Affordable Care Act (aka "Obamacare") takes hold, the need for personal connected health device connectivity will only increase, as mentioned by Alliance members Ian Hay (Orange), Barry Reinhold (Lamprey Networks), and Frank Wartena (Philips Research Europe) in the following interview.

ECD: Briefly describe the Continua Health Alliance – when formed and by whom, how many members, technology focus.

CONTINUA: Continua Health Alliance, established in 2006, is an international not-for-profit industry organization enabling end-to-end, plug-and-play connectivity of personal health devices and services. Continua convenes industry standards that enable personal connected health technologies, to move health and wellness into the day-to-day lives of consumers and improve health management, quality of life, and clinical outcomes, while reducing costs. [...]