The Personal Connected Health Alliance (PCHA) is a first-of-its-kind collaboration between three industry-leading organizations to engage consumers with their health via personalized solutions that are designed for user-friendly connectivity and meet their lifestyle needs.
The PCHA brings together Continua’s global plug-and-play interoperability Design Guidelines and product certification program, the mHealth Summit's global ecosystem of networking events, industry education and thought leadership, and HIMSS' worldwide presence supporting locally-based advocacy and market development. This new alliance is generating greater awareness, availability and access to plug-and-play, consumer-friendly personal health technologies to empower individuals to better manage their health and wellness anywhere at any time.
The alliance is also working to ensure that the billions of individual health data points generated by consumers using mobile devices, sensors, apps and other wireless tools can be integrated by providers, hospitals and healthcare systems to support consumer-centric, consultative healthcare delivery and more effective population health.
The PCHA believes that the success of personal connected health depends upon engaging consumers and ensuring that connected health solutions are responsive and compelling. We place high value on features such as convenience, mobility, interoperability, accessibility, entertainment, education and social connection – features driving the consumer market today. Standards-based interoperability facilitates the most convenient, secure and robust health data exchange and greatest utility of health information for personal and population health management.
There are already many consumer tools available for managing health, fitness and wellness, from apps to track exercise or diet to wearable devices for managing diabetes or high blood pressure to games that bring consumers together to compete for better health. Smartphones, trackers, tablets and computers are the latest accessories for health self-management. Social media makes it possible for consumers to access networks of friends, family, co-workers or others who share similar health goals to gain support or engage in friendly competition. Monitoring services for the elderly are helping seniors stay in touch with relatives and caregivers and work toward better health from home.
In the healthcare industry, connected remote monitoring programs implemented by hospitals and healthcare systems are showing that connected health tools can help patients avoid re-admissions or ER visits and become engaged in disease management, prevention or fitness.
The backdrop of rising healthcare costs, the chronic disease epidemic, an aging population and persistent disparities in healthcare access are creating an urgent sense of focus on personal connected health as a potential solution.
As part of its mission, the PCHA will maintain a ‘consumer-first’ focus on personal connected health and work to ensure that the resulting solutions create stronger links between consumers, their social networks and healthcare providers. The PCHA will also advocate and coordinate on a global basis with regulators, government agencies and the healthcare and technology industries to create the necessary supports to deliver on the promise of personal connected health.
Consumers are demanding what they want and need from health services: Convenience. Ease of use. Access to health education. Inspiration and motivation. Connection. Flexibility. Simple tracking and trending. Support to manage health anytime, anywhere.
The PCHA believes that personal connected health technologies will drive fundamental changes in human health and will work to unite stakeholders around the achievement of this vision.
Clint McClellan is president and board chairman of the Continua Health Alliance and acting chairman of the PCHA.
