USB Personal Healthcare Device Class Specification

Jesse Brooks

LINK: http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/other/display/20070403121551.html

Medical devices like home blood pressure monitors and blood sugar monitors are very common, but the majority of these devices simply display your stats. The medical device industry has created a personal healthcare device class specification, based on USB (universal serial bus), which sets a standard for connectivity for future medical devices. Not only is this USB standard going to allow patients to connect their devices to their computers and cell phones, but also it handles healthcare messages and data in a different way than traditional USB interface devices. This standardization will force medical device companies to use USB for connectivity, which will make connecting medical devices to your computer and cell phones more common. As more people have their medical data on Internet connected devices, the possibility for information sharing with physicians and medical researchers is endless.

USE CASE: Establish connectivity standard to allow individuals to communicate their medical device data to their health providers.

Patient (Primary Actor) buys a blood pressure monitor that uses the new USB interface to connect to the computer. The patient is able to connect the USB device to her computer because USB is already a standard for computers. Once connected, the patient is able to transfer all of her Blood Pressure data to the computer, which then she can send electronically to her physician for remote analysis. The physician can monitor the patient without requiring the patient to come into the office. It can also allow the doctor to be more proactive and indentify problems before the patient comes in for regularly scheduled appointments.

STANDARDS: This USB personal healthcare device class is establishing a standard for connectivity of medical devices and how these devices should handle special healthcare messages/data.