ITU signs off network spec for personal medical devices

The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has signed off a new standard for communication between personal medical devices. It will come as no surprise to learn that Intel, Cisco, IBM, Oracle, several consumer electronics giants and the industry groups behind WiFi, Bluetooth and Zigbee are behind the new standard, as …

[Anonymous Coward]

Notice that Agilent is not a member.

[kain preacher]

Neither is Johnson & Johnson.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just shows that the current incumbents want to keep the status quo where you need their products, their software, etc. The fact is, many health care providers will gladly switch as the costs are bound to be cheaper. You can use vendor X against vendor Y. Currently you would need to do a forklift upgrade and many won't do that.

[harmjschoonhoven]

@ AC 2013-12-23 01:16 GMT

... costs are lower OR ... is cheaper

[Nile]

Paranoid? Me? Aliens ordered the NHS to stop prescribing tinfoil hats

I hope that the new standards include authentication and encryption for insulin pumps and pacemakers.

And, for that matter, basic testing and audit standards: Toyota's recent experience with 'spaghetti' code in their accelerator control chips suggests that there's a lot of embedded software in safety-critical systems that can kill you when the bugs are discovered after the system's in production.

[Fatman]

RE: "laundry list of wireless and messaging standards"

But this ITU page lists the other standards ITU-T H.810 relies on and suggests it encapsulates a laundry list of wireless and messaging standards. ®

IOW: cue the patent trolls!!! I would not put it past those bastards at crApple to dig out their patent portfolio, and start filing new ones, substituting "medical device" for mobile device in as many of them as they can.

There's shitloads of money to be extracted from the medical field, especially in the US.