News

Bluetooth Technology Chosen as Continua Health Alliance Standard

09.06.2009

Continua Health Alliance, the non-profit, open industry coalition of leading health care and technology companies, has selected Bluetooth low energy wireless technology as one of the two wireless technology standards to be included in the next version of the Continua Health Alliance Design Guidelines.

This announcement by Continua is the result of extensive time and efforts spent by the Bluetooth SIG to ensure Bluetooth technology will continue to be the wireless standard for health care, fitness and sports devices. No small feat, these sorts of changes in our industry are often driven outside of the public forum through the relationships that we have developed. Our members have built and continue to advance a technology that is the ubiquitous wireless standard for mobile device connectivity and our state-of-the-art testing tools and qualification program ensure Bluetooth technology is the effective choice for a wide range of industry devices and applications. This announcement is recognition of those efforts and of Bluetooth technology as the global standard for wireless connectivity.

The Continua radio selection process was conducted by members of the Continua Low Power Radio Sub-Team, the Continua Technical Working Group and the Continua Board of Directors. All teams were aided by experts from the technology and health care industries-at-large, as well as guided by research conducted by an independent third party analysis firm. After 10 months of extensive consideration of required power levels, cell phone ubiquity, required range, and anticipated market penetration, Continua arrived at just two technologies to optimally satisfy the required use cases.

Continuas selection of Bluetooth low energy wireless technology, pending finalization of the specification by the SIG, will enable monitoring of health and fitness levels with the use of low power mobile devices such as activity monitors and heart rate sensors. This development will drive the reach of Bluetooth technology far beyond the existing 20 million health and fitness Bluetooth devices in the marketplace today.

Continua selected two wireless technology standards to ensure that the next iterations of Continua Health Alliance Design Guidelines are targeted to support both mobile and fixed location devices. Continua selected ZigBee Health Care technology for fixed, low power sensors that can be networked in static environments. Unlike Bluetooth technology, which enables mobile applications as well as small, battery powered devices for a wide range of applications and environments, ZigBee will be used in fixed locations.

The low cost, power consumption, and small size of Bluetooth low energy technology will provide power efficient, short-range, wireless connectivity between mobile devices and small, battery powered devices such as watches, emergency pendants, and health and fitness sensors. With the selection of Bluetooth low energy wireless technology Continua members will now have a reliable solution to enable a wide range of mobile devices. Bluetooth technology will also serve to extend the current Continua standard for the Bluetooth Health Device Profile, which is the only wireless technology specification included in Continuas Version One Design Guidelines, announced in February 2009.

For more information about the selection, read the press release on Bluetooth.com.

For more information about the Bluegiga Health Device Profile (HDP): https://www.bluegiga.com/solutiongroup?g=Healthcare

Contact: https://www.bluegiga.com/hdp_contact_form

[email protected]

Back to news archive

RSS