Healthcare Software

Continua certification - what standards are used?

Unless you buy the Continua design guidelines document ($500 for non-members), understanding the standards the Continua certification is based on is not clear, even at a high level. With a bit of digging, I found this whitepaper gives a bit more detail.

In terms of connectivity (the "PAN interface"), Continua has selected the Bluetooth Health Device Profile and the USB Personal Healthcare Device Profile.

In terms of data representation and exchange with EHR/EMR-type systems (the "xHRN interface"), it is the HL7 PHM document standard and the XDR document interchange standard.

The most interesting of all these choices is certainly the HL7 PHM standard. For one, to find out more about the requirements on the web, you really have to know where to look. Go to this HL7 repository and download the package entitled HL7 Implementation Guide for CDA Release 2: Personal Healthcare Monitoring Report, Release 1.

Second, PHM appears to have a large intersect with CDA and CCD. Logically, PHM, like CDA and CCD, may represent a lot of work to implement and be onerous for medical device creators to adhere to. A good start would be if there were a PHM.xsd - I haven't found one available yet.