IEEE, the world’s largest professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for humanity, announced today that the IEEE Standards Association (IEEE-SA) has approved IEEE 11073-10417-2015, an openly-defined, independent standard for controlling information exchange to and from personal health devices and information management devices such as cell phones, computers, and personal healthcare appliances. Leveraging ISO/IEEE 11073 terminology, information models, and exchange protocols, IEEE 11073-10417-2015 specifies term codes, formats, and behaviors in personal telehealth environments to enable plug-and-play interoperability between glucose metering devices and gateway devices, which are often supplied by different vendors.

According to a report by iData Research, the U.S. market for patient monitoring technology is expected to grow to more than $5.1 billion by 2020. IEEE 11073-10417 addresses the need for stakeholders to leverage the open, non-proprietary flow of information to streamline communication, enable interoperability, and advance the development and manufacture of products supporting this rapidly growing market.

“In a world that is increasingly connected, and where telehealth expansion has become a driving force in standards development, there is clear benefit for device manufacturers to adopt an open standard whereby they assure their products will continue to interplay in an evolving, vast, and varied market,” said Daidi Zhong, chair, IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. “IEEE 11073-10417-2015 is supportive to a broad group of stakeholders and offers an open solution that ensures devices maintain functionality in the telehealth ecosystem, while also opening the door for further product development based on interoperability.”

 The IEEE-10417-2015 standard, in conjunction with IEEE 11073-10425 and IEEE 11073-10419, enables a toolbox for supporting diabetes patients and establishes a solid foundation for accelerating research in the domain of artificial pancreas development.