In what could lead to a Matter-like standard for connected health, the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) has formed a Health & Wellness Working Group.

Its brief is to create technical standards and a certification programme for IoT device interoperability in the space.

Just as the alliance released Matter last year with a common language and certification programme supporting interoperability of IoT devices, the goal is to align major contributors in the industry around a common standard to support secure, plug-and-play interoperability of health and wellness devices.

At the outset, this initiative calls for adding health devices to the smart home ecosystem, enabling a trusted approach for sharing health data, including support for regulatory requirements.

The working group development roadmap will begin with support for aging-in-place and independent living by using data generated from connected smart home devices. It will then expand to address a broad set of home health and wellness devices and use cases, such as remote patient monitoring, chronic condition management and acute care in the home. 

Taking a cue from Matter, the working group will apply global scale to technology, allowing individuals to stay healthier and live in their homes longer, with greater independence.

As a result of the global Covid pandemic, people have become accustomed to healthcare interactions in their homes, with services such as telemedicine and at-home testing. This will rapidly expand to new healthcare devices and repurposing existing IoT devices to generate data that are vital to health and wellness.

To achieve this, the alliance aims to drive simplicity and trust when connecting devices and services that incorporate health data into the smart home.

The market potential for supporting aging-in-place and home healthcare tech and services is tremendous and growing. The CSA says reaching the full potential of this initiative requires standardised technology approaches that support interoperability, security, reliability of data and ease of use, the linchpins to drive scale and market adoption.