This month, the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) announced the formation of a Health and Wellness Working Group to create technical standards and a certification program for IoT device interoperability in the health and wellness market segment.
On the heels of CSA releasing the Matter standard last year with a common language and certification program supporting interoperability of IoT devices, the Alliance says the goal of the new working group is to align major contributors in the industry around a common technology standard to support secure, plug-and-play interoperability of health and wellness devices.
CSA stated in a press release that, from the outset, the new working group initiative calls for adding health devices to the smart home ecosystem, enabling a trusted approach for sharing health data, including support for regulatory requirements.
Taking a cue from the development of the Matter standard, the consortium said its Health and Wellness Working Group will apply global scale to technology solutions, allowing individuals to stay healthier and live in their homes longer, with greater independence.
As reckoned by a CSA press release:
As a result of the global COVID pandemic, we have become accustomed to healthcare interactions in our homes, with services such as telemedicine and at-home testing. This will rapidly expand to new healthcare devices and repurposing existing IoT devices to generate data that is vital to our health and wellness. Globally, technology needs to take a broader, evolving and always present role in our health and wellness.
We know that today about 8.5 percent of the global population is 65 years in age or older. The National Institute for Health states that by the year 2030, one in five Americans will be 65 or older. “Aging-in-place” is just one of the many facets of global health and wellness that requires technology to not only bridge anticipated gaps, but to identify new ways technology, and particularly IoT devices, can improve our health and overall wellness.
CSA said the working group's development roadmap will begin with support for aging-in-place and independent living by utilizing valuable data generated from connected smart home devices. The working group will then expand to address a broad set of home health and wellness devices and use cases, such as remote patient monitoring, chronic condition management, and acute care in the home.
To achieve success in eventually transforming the health and wellness IoT landscape, particularly for senior lifestyle dwellings, CSA emphasized that the working group "will need to drive simplicity and trust when connecting devices and services that incorporate health data into the smart home. The market potential for supporting aging-in-place and home healthcare tech and services is tremendous and growing," concluded the consortium. "Reaching the full potential of this initiative requires standardized technology approaches that support interoperability, security, reliability of data, and ease-of-use — the linchpins to drive scale and market adoption."
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