In brief, progress has been reported in four areas:
1) Increased membership
2) First set of interoperability standards: due out in early 2008
3) Test and Certification Program for products that meet the first standard
4) Starting to develop a ‘definitive collection of worldwide patient monitoring trial data’ (starting with US and Europe) with a view to reducing the barriers to telehealth reimbursement, and therefore its adoption.
For details, Wireless HealthCare [URL “http://www.wirelesshealthcare.co.ukRemoveThisFromTheUrl/wh/news/wk37-07-0002.htm” is reported by Google to be compromised by malware, 16 March 2015] has the best write up I’ve seen, or download the Continua press release.
For the curious, as I was, the explanation of the Alliance’s logo, which will be used, it seems, on certified products to give instant recognition and assurance to purchasers, is that the gaps between the coloured blocks represent a person’s limbs – see the white dot for the head – and the blocks themselves represent the person surrounded by care and by the media that connect up the parts.
Where is telecare on the ‘microtrend’ continuum?
As a side note, Mark Penn, who is CEO of Burson-Marsteller, the PR company used by the Continua Alliance, has been getting a lot of publicity recently of his own (as you might expect him to be able to do) over a book Microtrends. ‘Microtrend’ is fast becoming the latest buzzword and will soon be used by anyone who wants to promote anything. So how ‘micro’ does something have to be? Does the introduction of telecare count, or is it too big already? Read Microtrends will not outgrow ‘likeability’ Rachel Sylvester in the Telegraph. (Of course, Telecare Aware is a micro-microtrend in its own right!)