IEEE 11073 Personal Health Devices

Continua Alliance Compliant Devices

We make wireless radio modules that connect personal health devices using the IEEE 11073 and Continua Alliance standards. Our modules are compliant with the ZigBee Healthcare Profile and are already working in these devices from several manufacturers:

  • Blood pressure monitors
  • Weighing scales
  • Medication dispensers
  • Pulse oximeters
  • Blood glucose meters
  • Chair sensors
  • Bed sensors
  • PIR motion sensors
  • Temperature sensors
  • Humidity sensors

We can supply these devices ready to run.

Hydra Radio Modules

If you are a manufacturer of personal health devices then we can also supply the wireless radio modules – in a number of form factors – to install in your own telecare or telehealth device. The Hydra Radio Module (HRM) is a family of PCB assemblies that can connect a wide variety of sensors to a ZigBee low-power wireless network.

Its initial market is for moving telecare and telehealth data from the home to carers, but it can also be used for other machine-to-machine communications applications.

HZM ZigBee Radio Board

Development kits are available, and you can use our consultancy services to customise the technology for your application.

Implementing IEEE 11073 agents with the HZM

The Hydra Radio Module (HrM) is designed to operate as an IEEE 11073 “agent”. That is, it is designed for inclusion in Personal Health Devices (PHDs).

The HRM performs four main roles:

  1. It interfaces with the PHD sensor electronics, to collect the latest data from the PHD.
  2. It converts the reading from the PHD into a format defined by the IEEE 11073 device specialistion standard appropriate for the particular type of device (weigh scales, blood pressure monitor, pulse oximeter etc).
  3. It provides a ZigBee radio connection to the IEEE 11073 manager (typically the Hydra Healthcare Gateway) so that the agent and manager can exchange IEEE 11073 messages.
  4. It communicates with the IEEE 11073 manager to exchange IEEE 11073 messages, both initially to identify itself and its capabilities, then whenever a new measurement arrives.

The HRM hardware architecture is very flexible. There are many interfaces available and it is straightforward to find a set of signals that are appropriate to connect to the PHD sensor. Most commonly, all that is required is a serial interface to exchange data, and a wake-up signal from the sensor that indicates when new data is available.

The HRM software architecture has been written so that adding a new PHD is very straightforward. Essentially all that is required is to write a small piece of code to communicate with the sensor and obtain the latest reading (item 1 above), and a “data model” that complies with the appropriate device specialisation standards (item 2 above). The bulk of the software remains unchanged.

Please look at these downloads: