Standards organization Continua Health Alliance made available its most recent 2014 design guidelines today. The guidelines were approved by The International Telecommunication Union, the United Nations specialized agency for information and communication technologies.

The guidelines are available to the public as a free download from Continua, an international non-profit multi-stakeholder group that convenes global technology industry standards to develop end-to-end, plug-and-play connectivity for personal connected health, and ITU.

The guidelines are formatted to ITU specifications and feature: interface between personal area network, local area network and touch area network health devices and application hosting devices, including near-field communication, international normalized ratio and Bluetooth LE glucose meter; and consent enforcement via wide area network and Health Record Network health devices. The 2013 Guidelines were the first guidelines approved by ITU as the global standards for interoperability for personal connected health.

[See also: IEEE, Continua partner on standards.]

"Continua's 2014 Design Guidelines have been adopted by the ITU as the first global standard for personal connected health devices and systems, enabling more efficient innovation and accelerated adoption of personal connected health, and improving the self-management of health and wellness," said Continua Board President and Chairman Clint McClellan, in a news release. "The prevention and management of chronic conditions, such as diabetes, hypertension and obesity, are critical priorities in the world today. As a result, interoperability is becoming a key criteria for delivering care via readily-available consumer products such as smartphones, tablets and computers."

Continua completed an eight-month, internal testing and comment period before public release of the guidelines, McClellan added. Each set of guidelines is subject to interoperability testing to ensure Continua certified products and services, such as smartphones, gateways and remote monitoring devices, connect to other products or systems without restrictions or specific implementation.

At HIMSS14 last month, HIMSS announced it would form The Personal Connected Health Alliance with Continua and the mHealth Summit, with the goal of increasing consumer engagement in healthcare. The mission will be to "promote the adoption of technology designed to produce highly informed and integrated solutions," said HIMSS President and CEO H. Stephen Lieber.

[See also: Continua, HIMSS introduce Personal Connected Health Alliance.]