Recent Advances in mHealth: An Update to Personal Health Device Interoperability Based on ISO/IEEE11073

Abstract

In recent years important advances have been made in the development of health care systems in specific areas owing to different uses and applications. One of the foremost advancements is the so-called mobile Health (mHealth), due to its potential social and economic impact. Within this scope, several technologies – such as smart phones and ultra-slim tablet-PCs, as well as low-voltage and low-power wireless sensor networks – provide telemonitoring services at home and ubiquitous support when they are strongly integrated. Therefore, the integration of international interoperability standards is, nevertheless, required for a regulated transmission of health information in mHealth scenarios. However, such implementation tends to increase the processing load and battery size in order to ensure its autonomy. To tackle this problem, different strategies are being tested in this set of mobile technologies which are aimed at providing a solution to such critical aspects. Another important aspect that should be addressed is the management of communication between different parts that constitutes the system. The new communication capabilities of smart phones enable the implementation of new techniques that improve data transmission from the mobile system to the telemonitoring center, facilitating the integration of Personal Health Devices (PHDs) with telemonitoring systems. This makes the system more accessible to the user.This work highlights some new features of X73PHD and the benefits of using them. In addition, current needs to enhance the operational capacity of the different specializations of X73PHD are also shown, which include the definition of new remote command and control functionalities. These new management functions are being developed in order to allow any X73PHD-compliant manager to modify the operation of any X73PHD-compliant agent. This functionality could expand the technological boundaries of interoperable mHealth to healthcare services and improve Quality of Service (QoS) by providing remote configuration of medical devices to health professionals. The definition of this a new package extension for X73PHD involves the analysis of previous studies and related use cases, work which is currently being carried out within the PHD Working Group (PHD-WG), in which the authors are actively collaborating. Future lines include the proposal and adoption of the new extension remote command and control package, along with its application to other specializations.