Wireless Healthcare Standards Evolving
The Continua Health Alliance is trying to solidify an application standard for interconnected healthcare devices that are both mobile, like pulse oximeters, and fixed like sensors used for remote patient monitoring. These technologies promise to ease the burden of caring for the elderly whether in their own homes or assisted living centers. In the quest to automate the care of the aging population, wireless sensors are a necessity keep Grandma from looking like a Borg or to keep her her house from looking like the back of my TV.
It’s generally good when vendors form a consortium to serve the consumer by promising inter-operation. But let’s be frank, agreeing on terms that simplify to products often remove differentiation, and add compliance and standards negotiation hassles that would not otherwise exist. This is where the rubber meets the road, and all to often these efforts struggle because being a leader means being better than standard. A few leaders will largely write the rules.
But in our modern ecosystems there is more at work here. Reading the chronology of press releases for Continua HA, the story depicted is one of struggling to show where you want to go, but not knowing for sure how to get there. Other standards organizations are also competing for their press releases. In a few short months the consortium has already released design guidelines, and changed them to include other standards, even those that are not stable yet. ZigBee, Bluetooth, Bluetooth LE, and USB are all brought under the banner, and healthcare application profiles are developed on top of those “standards”.
Something better than a single vendor ecosystem is liable to develop from this. However, be cautiously optimistic about the stability and interoperability that will come from it. Participating vendors get an opportunity to shape the outcome, and will surely do their best to accentuate their strategic advantages. As a user, whether this organization becomes one that herds cats long enough to develop the tiger’s teeth needed to actually ensure interoperability, remains to be seen.
Sensors in the Cloud
Sensor networks with hierarchies and their resultant isolation will eventually give way to the notion that all devices should interoperate with the world, through IP protocols. I’ve advocated this trend for some time, but several news items from Sensors magazine reinforce this: Zigbee and IP and Pedigree Releases Oneview
From an architectural perspective, this only makes sense for several reasons:
1. Network boundaries based on protocols and transports are technical problems, not business ones.
2. Security through obscurity and incompatibility is not secure, therefore real controls need to also be business, not product oriented.
3. When every sensor is is viewed from a services perspective, it becomes clear that real integration to many applications does not always need to be done through a gateway. Many times, the horses mouth is a better source of information.
4. Businesses are increasingly interested in services delivered by the cloud, whether that cloud is the public cloud, or one of their own ownership, the cloud concept is ubiquitous, and reliable, not focused and fragile hierarchical architectures.
Of course, Wifi Sensors already have IP capability, now Zigbee sensors will approximate it. But there functional protocols in Wifi sensors don’t exist. Perhaps we can encourage these camp to standardize on both network and functional protocols and the world would be more interoperable for sensor networks.
RFID Forecast 2009-2019 Interesting Notes
In a recently released report: RFID Forecasts, Players & Opportunities 2009–2019
I found several thing interesting: (Context warning: this is related primarily to passive technologies.)
1. The total spend is only expected to grow 10% in 2009. Hardly a sign we are on the hockey stick of adoption.
2. Three of Five dollars spent is by Government.
3. Government’s top priorities are NOT ROI, but reduced errors, security, information value to management.
4. Case and Pallet tagging is still considered a failure, not surprising since it would need to replace bar code which is so effective.
5. Average tags prices are still $1.20. Where’s Moore’s Law?
6. HF sales are 5 times that of any other frequency. I find this surprising with all the focus on EPC Gen2.
7. The biggest and most successful vertically aligned companies only cover 2 verticals. This backs an assertion I have held for a long time- There are no globally applicable technologies yet. All need vertical specialization to be effective.
What are the lessons learned?
1. Focus on a problem not solvable by other technologies.
2. Know your end customer well, do not assume you understand their motivations.
3. Do not assume optimistic projections in sales of devices, or cost of using them.
4. KISS - Pick the technology that makes sense for your vertical, not the flavor of the day. Don’t count on commoditization to make your use case.
ZigBee vs WiFi smackdown!
Zigbee the much touted wireless sensor network standard has been around a while now. Yet, it’s adoption has been limited. Already several variants and versions have emerged. Any willing vendor can obtain chipsets and protocol stacks and get started right away. But what always makes or breaks a new standard is how well it is adopted, and how the cooperative ecosystem develops. I see very little multi-vendor activity out there. Zigbee vendors seem to be offering closed loop systems with the standard stamp.
WiFi on the other hand is past adoption cycle, it is ubiquitous like the 19th feature you add to your candy bar phone. It’s not the most elegant approach to wireless sensors, but recent advances in the integration level of the chips, and specific targeting of low power applications by chip vendors such as G2 and Gainspan, have provided a challenge for Zigbee that may be difficult to fend off in more controlled applications such as offices and hospitals where managed Wifi has become a necessity.
But before you dismiss this as another standards flame war, let’s consider the closely. What separates these two standards is mostly software (meshability and device profiles), and some inherent efficiencies of the protocol. But users could care less about protocol, and we’re all aware of SMOP. If Wifi can be in the same order of magnitude as Zigbee in battery life and cost, and mesh is an unneeded or easily added capability, Zigbee may not fly for being just another protocol.
Protocols are an apples to apples comparison, but let’s consider the larger use case. Wireless sensors are most useful when their data ubiquitous, and all the other devices you want to use to display, notify, and interact are on IP networks. So WiFi has a huge advantage there in that it is IP friendly. In fact, I foresee a time when wireless sensor devices can use web services directly, rather than need application servers. Data analysis and messaging could be done in the cloud where it is reliable and manageable.
Companies have proposed solutions to this, such as http://www.archrock.com/ but they are just a bridge. Why do we need a bridge if we already have everything we need on this side of the river?
Please comment. Use your sharpest weapons. Let the games begin!
New Zigbee Health and Wellness Profiles
Recently, the Zigbee Alliance released standards for Medical oriented devices to allow standardized interoperability for device functions. Eventually, this should allow worthwhile peer- to peer functionality on the 802.15 network, over and above centralized monitoring applications. I can see this functionality built on Zigbee being very useful in elder care facilities, because of its interaction with home control devices. The aging population will be a growing market in the next few decades, and minimally supervised residential housing is likely to boom, especially as economics nudge retirees from living in expansive homes. So this is a prime market opportunity.
Publish at Scribd or explore others: Health & Medicine 2008 software
