The Continua Health Alliance, a consortium of wireless and medical companies, which aim to create an interoperable ecosystem of medical devices and systems, has been busy this year. After announcing its first two Continua-certified products, the Alliance also announced two new wireless technologies for its Version 2 guidelines: ZigBee and Bluetooth Low Energy. Most of the devices under Continua's purview are in the wheelhouse of wireless remote monitoring.

Chuck Parker, Executive Director of Continua Health Alliance, told attendees at Healthcare Unbound in Seattle, Washington that the Alliance's membership has swelled to 207 members, which marks a 17+ companies jump in just the past two months. Parker also revealed that two different companies had already had their hardware cleared by Continua's certification process and should be announced soon. 

"We're just waiting on the paper work," Parker said.

Parker said that remote patient monitoring doesn't need to do anymore trials or pilots. The Veterans Health Administration (VA) has done remote patient monitoring pilots with about 30,000 patients over the past four years, Parker said. That's enough pilots, Parker said, we don't need to do any more pilots for remote patient monitoring; we need to move to deployments, and look to the VA for their pilots' findings.