OBJECTIVES: Increasing use of medical devices outside of healthcare facilities inevitably requires connectivity and interoperability between medical devices and healthcare information systems. To this end, standards have been developed and used to provide interoperability between personal health devices (PHDs) and external systems. ISO/IEEE 11073 standards and IHE PCD-01 standard messages have been used the most in the exchange of observation data of health devices. Recently, transmitting observation data using the HL7 FHIR standard has been devised in the name of DoF (Devices on FHIR) and adopted very fast. We compare and analyze these standards and suggest that which standard will work best at the different environments of device usage. METHODS: We generated each message/resource of the three standards for observed vital signs from blood pressure monitor and thermometer. Then, the size, the contents, and the exchange processes of these messages are compared and analyzed. RESULTS: ISO/IEEE 11073 standard message has the smallest data size, but it has no ability to contain the key information, patient information. On the other hand, PCD-01 messages and FHIR standards have the fields for patient information. HL7 DoF standards provide reusing of information unit known as resource, and it is relatively easy to parse DoF messages since it uses widely known XML and JSON. CONCLUSIONS: ISO/IEEE 11073 standards are suitable for devices having very small computing power. IHE PCD-01 and HL7 DoF messages can be used for the devices that need to be connected to hospital information systems that require patient information. When information reuse is frequent, DoF is advantageous over PCD-01.
Blood Pressure Monitors ; Delivery of Health Care ; Hand ; Hospital Information Systems ; Humans ; Information Systems ; Thermometers ; Vital Signs

OBJECTIVE: The current personal health devices are used as stand.alone machines or transmit the personal health information only to local PCs. The objective of this research is to build a system which can transmit personal health information from personal health devices to the healthcare server systems. METHODS: In this research, we used infrared (IrDA) and Bluetooth for wireless communication from the personal health devices to a PDA. And, we utilized SMS (Simple Message Service) and world wide web systems to deliver the data from the PDA to other mobile phones or to the board in the web server. RESULTS: We developed the system that wirelessly communicates personal health information from the personal health devices to a PDA. The system also delivers both glucose and blood pressure data from the PDA to other mobile phones by SMS (Simple Message Service) or automatically register to the board in the web server. CONCLUSION: We showed convenient and easy way of collecting personal health information. Our system will contribute improving personal healthcare environment and personal health device business.
Blood Pressure ; Cellular Phone ; Commerce ; Delivery of Health Care ; Glucose ; Humans ; Internet