Personal Connected Health

Overview

The IHE Personal Connected Health (PCH) Subdomain is a Subdomain of the IHE Device (DEV) Domain. The PCH Subdomain supports those device-related harmonization activities that are required for seamless integration between the clinical and consumer environments. The PCH Subdomain also coordinates with other Subdomains of the DEV Domain, which include the Patient Care Device (PCD) and Device Point-of-Care Interoperability (DPi) Subdomains.

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 (PCH) Subdomain 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 (PCH) Subdomain was created in 2019 as part of an effort to broaden the scope of the IHE Patient Care Device Domain (now the IHE Device (DEV) Domain) to include personal connected health outside the clinical environment. IHE entered into a cooperative agreement with the 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 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 Personal Connected Health (PCH) Subdomain is sponsored by: Personal Connected Health Alliance

Committees

The PCH subdomain has a combined PCH Planning & Technical Committee that meets regularly to address both planning and technical issues.

Current Subdomain Projects

The PCH Subdomain currently has several activities that address the following:

• Communication based on simplified IEEE 11073 DIM - 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.

PCH Profiles

The PCH Subdomain is developing the following IHE Profiles:

• 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 Personal Connected Health (PCH) Subdomain, please contact the Subdomain Secretary at pch@ihe.net.

Domains

Domain Coordination Committee