Avoid Personal Health Data Interop Pitfalls by Demonstrating Device Standards Compliance

Feb 04, 2021

By Thom Erickson, Director of Technical Operations, HIMSS

The Personal Connected Health Alliance (PCHAlliance) has released an update to its free Continua Test Tool (CTT), a valuable guidepost used to demonstrate to your customer that your medical device has properly implemented popular industry standards, and that your device works seamlessly across the medical device ecosystem.

A central pillar of PCHAlliance’s mission is to work for the free flow of patient health data. In support of that, we collaborate on connected device data standards to achieve interoperability as specified in our own Continua Design Guidelines and in IHE’s profiles, and verified by the CTT.

After merging profile development efforts in 2019, PCHAlliance and IHE moved quickly to create the Personal Health Devices Observation Upload profile that maps medical-grade vitals into FHIR® resources and sends them to FHIR servers used in health information systems.

What’s new? The CTT was updated to measure conformance of a device to that new profile. Furthermore, the CTT is now integrated with IHE’s Gazelle Test Management Platform to simplify the effort to demonstrate interoperability with other medical devices during IHE Connectathons.

To reduce the time and cost to implement this profile into your device, the PCHAlliance also has available today software for collecting observation data via Bluetooth® Low Energy, the upload of observations using FHIR, and receiving those observations by a FHIR server.

If you’re new to the CTT, you should know that the CTT provides extensive device templates that automatically generate your product’s test plan in order to set up your product’s test execution. You can also create your own template based on any changes in features your product may have over a template previously created by the test tool. This helps ensure your product can maintain its certified status as the test tool and IHE profiles evolve. To create a template, simply select the template from the New Project form.

DOWNLOAD the free Continua Test Tool today!