View source for Personal Connected Health

===Overview===
The IHE Personal Connected Health (PCH) Program is a program under the [[Devices|IHE Devices (DEV) Domain]]. The PCH Program supports those device-related harmonization activities that are required for seamless integration between the clinical and consumer environments. The PCH Program also coordinates with other Programs of the DEV Domain, which include the Patient Care Device (PCD) and Device Point-of-Care Interoperability (DPi) Programs.

===Mission===
Provide industry resources to guide development, implementation and conformance assessment of personal connected health devices and apps to manage measurements of personal health and make them available to health information systems and exchanges.

===Vision===
The Personal Connected Health Program promotes the development of IHE Profiles for remote health and fitness monitoring in support of consumer-centered approach to improving their health and wellness. PCH Profiles provide guidance for implementing globally recognized standards that enable collection and sharing of massive amounts of medical-grade personal health data.

===History===
The Personal Connected Health Program was created in 2019 as part of an effort to broaden the scope of the IHE Patient Care Device Domain (now the [[Devices|IHE Devices (DEV) Domain]]) to include personal connected health outside the clinical environment. IHE entered into a cooperative agreement with the [https://www.pchalliance.org Personal Connected Health Alliance (PCHA)] to leverage their experiences and expertise in personal connected health and remote patient monitoring. More specifically, the early profiles are based on the [https://www.pchalliance.org/continua-design-guidelines PCHA Continua Design Guidelines] that provide the only secure end-to-end information & communication technology solution for personal connected health and care using open standards.

===Sponsors===
The PCH Program is sponsored by:
[https://www.pchalliance.org Personal Connected Health Alliance]

===Committees===
The PCH Program has a combined [[PCH Planning & Technical Committee]] that meets regularly to address both planning and technical issues.

=== Target Market ===
PCH recognizes a broad ecosystem to ensure it brings value-add to stakeholders with diverse user perspectives, use case scenarios and requirements.  Key stakeholders include healthcare providers and insurance companies, remote care system integrators, medical technology and pharmaceutical companies.

It empowers healthcare providers and insurance companies to achieve outcomes at lower costs through outsourced population management services. It enables remote care service companies to draw upon IHE profiles to integrate the information & communication technology (ICT) systems essential to realizing these lower costs. It makes possible for device and sensor companies the means to furnish the meaningful observations that enable these ICT systems to deliver vital signs data captured from multiple sources by people at home and on the move. It provides pharmaceutical companies with the means to better measure drug efficacy.

===Program Projects===
The PCH Program currently has several activities that address the following:
*Communication based on simplified IEEE 11073 Device Information Model - The development of guidelines that help medical device manufacturers and Healthcare & Life Sciences (HCLS) software vendors leverage Patient Generated Health Data (PGHD) that is provided direct via cellular Internet of Things (IoT) and zero-touch configuration (no Bluetooth or WiFi pairing) by the patient. It also includes development of Profiles that Increase adoption by the personal health devices market by defining & leverage personal health device communication base protocols that are simple and stateless and that support less state-full approach and less complex base protocols and device specializations that are better supported on today’s popular platforms.
*Mobile health apps - The development of profiles that foster a singular domain in which to coordinate the development of implementation guidelines to help patient and consumer facing application developers employ IHE profiles to apply the HL7 FHIR and other standards for the purpose of moving data between personal mobile devices and applications, and health information systems and exchanges.
*Test & Tools – The development of test and verification tools and processes to foster compliance with the relevant IHE Profiles. 
*CDG evolution/maintenance – Evolving and maintaining the Continua Design Guidelines.
*Backlog projects – current activities on HOLD include updating the RPM Profile and finalizing the work on questionnaires.

The PCH Program has more projects awaiting resources.

===PCH Profiles===
The PCH Program is developing the following IHE Profiles:
*[[Personal Health Device Observation Upload | Personal Health Device Observation Upload (POU) Profile]] – Describes a standardized means of representing personal healthcare device (PHD) data as FHIR resources. PHDs are typically used by patients at home. The POU Profile is anticipated to supplement any IHE profile or activity requiring a patient to use PHDs.

===Contact===
To learn more about the PCH Program, please contact the Program Secretary at [mailto:pch@ihe.net pch@ihe.net]. 

[[Domains]]

[[Domain Coordination Committee]]

[[Category:DEV]]