Direct-to-Cloud-Constrained Devices Brief Proposal
1. Proposed Workitem: Direct-to-Cloud-Constrained Devices Brief Proposal
- Proposal Editor: Michael J. Kirwan
- Editor: Tim Frost
- Date: September 30th, 2020
- Version: 1.0
- Domain: DEVices
2. The Problem
With WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity the end-user is either restricted to transferring data wherever a hub is located, or would need to carry a hub device wherever they go. Furthermore, pairing and configuration is an additional obstacle. It is desired that medical sensors are small and long-life battery powered. Therefore it is desired to define a lightweight approach for secure direct data transfer from such a constrained device to cloud.
3. Key Use Case
Sarah has tested positive for Covid-19. While in quarantine, her physician suggests she monitor her temperature and blood saturation. The device provided to Sarah is a wearable sensor(s). Sarah's has no fixed broadband connectivity in her home; however, her wide area connectivity (a.k.a. cellular) is good, which means that her physician can receive and monitor her condition while she is at home without any extra work for Sarah or her physician as long as the devices Sarah is using have connectivity.
Johnny is a person with Type 1 diabetes. He is required to monitor his glucose levels continuously. The device provided to Johnny is a wearable sensor. Johnny is frequently mobile and has wide area connectivity (a.k.a. cellular) so his data can be uploaded to a back-end service for viewing and analysis by his physician.
4. Standards and Systems
3GPP, NB-IoT, eMTC, CoAP, IEEE 11073-10206, HL7 FHIR, IP/UDP/DTLS
5. Discussion
IHE DEVices PCH program defines interoperable data models and recommend transports for healthcare use-cases. This is a companion project to its prior work, the IHE PHD Observation Upload profile, completed last year.
Enabling personal connected health device sensor data in a constrained device (a simple device with a simple processor and battery constrained) to send its data directly over wide area networks, instead of via Bluetooth and WiFi, will provide a much more secure, trusted & direct path to providers and consumers of the data.