Current Newsletter - December 2008

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Continua Certification to be available by end of 2008

The Continua Health Alliance will certify its first round of interoperable telehealth products by the end of 2008, delivering on its promise to provide the marketplace with interoperable personal telehealth solutions.

Following a year that saw strong momentum and continued progress, Continua will be welcoming the first Continua Certified devices to the marketplace this month and well into next year. As products get ready for shipment, member companies are positioning themselves to be among the first to certify Continua products. Continua expects more than a dozen products to be certified in the first half of 2009, with a goal of June for a fully automated certification program.

Driving this ambitious schedule is Continua's Version 1 Design Guidelines. Now in its final review, the guidelines provide member companies with the necessary technical information to build and design products to be certifiable by Continua. This document will be available to Continua members in late December 2008, allowing them to jumpstart their certified products to market.

Continua has also confirmed the scope of Version 2 while also approving 19 use cases last month. Seven of these use cases are slated for completion by the end of summer 2009, while the remainder will be complete by spring of 2010.

First public Continua interoperability demonstration a success

Two days before Continua's Fall Members Summit in late October, 14 Continua member companies presented the first public demonstration of interoperable Continua products. Held at this year's Partners Connected Health Symposium, the demonstration showed two real-time solutions to Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and Type II Diabetes.

A&D Medical, Cambridge Consultants, CYPAK, FitLinxx, Google, IBM, Intel, NHS Connecting for Health, Nonin Medical, Oracle, Partners, Philips, Roche Diagnostics and University Health Network took part in two demonstrations that showcased Version 1 use cases.

Both demonstrations utilized device and xHR interfaces. Please click here for the presentation and here to see the full demonstration.

Source code now available to Continua members

The latest release of the Continua Enabled Source Code Library (CESL), or Vendor Assisted Source code, is now available to the membership. This is now in its third official release and helps members accelerate their product production, decreasing the time to market and saving Continua member companies more than $500,000 in product development!

CESL is more than 500 modules of member-written source code that is being completed by LNI. It is not optimized for any specific device, and has already been downloaded by more than 40 Continua member companies. The latest release marks the first functionally complete edition.

If your company is a Continua member, click here for information on how to access CESL.

Continua selects Charles Parker as new executive director

Charles "Chuck" Parker is the new executive director of the Continua Health Alliance. Parker is a healthcare professional with more than 20 years experience in the industry, who was hired after the Board of Directors identified the need for a full-time executive to help manage the alliance's goals. He will be coordinating both short- and long-term objectives for Continua, as the alliance pursues the creation of its interoperable ecosystem.

"Continua is at the forefront of a revolution in personal healthcare," said Chuck Parker. "By focusing on the creation of a new market of connected health and wellness devices and solutions, Continua is empowering healthcare professionals, individuals and their families to better manage health and wellness at every stage of life. I'm proud to join Continua and look forward to helping the organization achieve its goal of better health, through connectivity."

Parker was most recently the Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President of Business Development and Marketing at Masspro, one of the United States' leading performance improvement organizations dedicated to advancing healthcare quality. He will be involved in all things Continua, including oversight of the alliance's certification program.

IHE and Continua Health Alliance Form partnership

The Continua Health Alliance has helped promote industry consistency by signing a memorandum of understanding with Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise International (IHE). Together, Continua and IHE will promote interoperability between medical devices, while reaching out to new audiences in the shared focus of both groups.

Both Continua and IHE recognize the need for and benefit of connecting medical and patient care devices with the healthcare system, a synergy that supports the joint educational and marketing efforts between the organizations.

"Continua Health Alliance is dedicated to enabling a marketplace of connected, personal health solutions to empower consumers and patients to take control of their personal health," said David Whitlinger, Continua Health Alliance president. "We're excited to work with IHE to help make this connectivity at the enterprise level a reality so patients can stay connected to their healthcare providers."

The agreement also helps both Continua and IHE expand their outreach to new audiences. Continua focuses on the personal telehealth industry with initial emphasis on fitness, managing chronic disease and aging independently. Within these groups are healthcare providers, insurance companies and government organizations, groups that IHE reaches through its programming and membership.

Continua announces two international symposiums for 2009

Continua will host two symposiums in 2009, one adjacent to the Continua Winter Summit in Tokyo and one adjacent to the Continua Spring Summit in Barcelona. Both will be open to the public.

On February 3-4, Continua will host the first summit at United Nations University in Tokyo. This symposium, held in partnership with Tskuba University and the Health Policy Institute of Japan, will detail modern telehealth solutions and explore how government and industry can act to best utilize that technology. Continua officials anticipate hosting half a dozen keynote addresses, several panels of industry leaders and a Continua product demonstration.

Join us in 2009!

Be a part of a growing organization comprised of more than 180 companies from around the world. With certified products set to enter the market place in the next 60 days, now is the time to join the Continua Health Alliance!

To learn more about the benefits of Continua membership, please review our Web site here http://www.continuaalliance.org/about-the-alliance/join.html. You can also download our Overview Presentation, which explains the objectives, membership and technology of the Continua Health Alliance.

For individual questions, contact Continua's administration at admin@continuaalliance.org