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Beaverton, Oregon, USA – Continua Health Alliance has announced the availability of its most recent 2014 Design Guidelines. Continua is an international non-profit multi-stakeholder group, and the leading organisation convening global technology industry standards to develop end-to-end, plug-and-play connectivity for personal connected health.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is the United Nations specialised agency for information and communication technologies. The Design Guidelines are now available to the public as a free download from Continua and ITU.

Continua’s 2014 Design Guidelines are formatted to ITU specifications and feature: interface between personal area network (PAN), local area network (LAN) and touch area network (TAN) health devices and application hosting devices (AHDs) including NFC (near-field communication), INR (international normalised ratio) and Bluetooth LE (Low Energy) Glucose Meter; and consent enforcement via wide area network (WAN) and Health Record Network (HRN) health devices. The 2013 Guidelines were the first guidelines approved by ITU as the global standards for interoperability for personal connected health.

“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 Clint McClellan (pictured), Continua Board President and Chairman. “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 Design Guidelines are developed by Continua and complete an eight month internal testing and comment period before public release. 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. Continua issued its original Design Guidelines in 2008 and 2010, and is working to release additional Design Guidelines each year.