International standards and open source for healthcare and wearables that are based on IoT will be officially introduced in May.
Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) made an announcement on the 2nd that it will introduce international standards and open source for wearable devices such as Smart Watches and ‘Healthcare IoT’ that includes fitness and IoT in May.
If open source is introduced, anyone can easily develop IoT technologies that are related to healthcare. It is predicted that development of technologies in this field will be sped up.
Research team is currently developing 2 healthcare standards (draft) that are related to IoT application international standards that are being developed by OIC (Open Interconnect Consortium), which is a group for standardization of IoT.
Research team first introduced prototype with healthcare standards that are currently being developed through IoTivity, which is an open source project under Linux Foundation.
ETRI is predicting that if international standards and open source are introduced, then 1 or 2 developers can finish developing technologies within 2 months.
Usually international standards and open source are not introduced to public. During this time, many developers need to focus on technology development for 1 to 2 years.
ETRI is predicting that international standards for ‘Healthcare IoT’ will be finalized in August.
ETRI is planning to make this standard to be compatible with healthcare international standards that are selected by IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) and others.
In this project for international standardization, Chief Researcher Chun Jong-hong, Senior Researcher Lee Won-seok, and a researcher Cha Hong-ki from ETRI’s Service Standardization Laboratory are participating as editors for OIC.
ETRI is currently developing standards as part of Ministry of Science, ICP and Future Planning’s ‘Development of Standards for Smart Wearables for Life Care’ Project. If internal standards are made in this field, one can wear a Smart Watch and check summary of information about his or her daily activities and heartbeat and blood sugar from a TV. Information about situation of a house as well as list of devices that can be controlled are listed in a Smart Watch. One can also check from his or her Smart Watch on information about his or her car that is located outside of a house and remotely turn on the engine or control the temperature of inside of a car. This Smart Watch can also act as a Smart Key for a car if Smart Watch is near a car.
For those that love to ride bicycles, they can get information about power consumption and number of pedal rotation that is obtained from power meter sensor as well as monitor heartbeat, temperature, and degree of oxygen saturation of muscles from a Smart Watch.
Because IoT was formed in similar fields such as household appliances, healthcare, industrial internet and others until now, there weren’t any international standards that would link SmartHome devices such as refrigerator, TV and others with automobiles and healthcare devices.
According to a market research company called IDC, healthcare market will be worth $12.4 billion in 2018 and is estimated to grow at about 10.2% annually. Juniper Research is also predicting that markets for wearable devices with healthcare functions will rapidly grow to be worth $20 billion in 2020 and that 300 million wearable devices will be shipped in 2018.
“If standardization is completed in May, people will be able to download open source codes and apply them for development of variety of wearable, fitness, and IoT devices and application.” said Chief Researcher Chun Jong-hong of ETRI. “They will be able to quickly respond to applications that are compatible with international standards.”
Staff Reporter Park, Heebum | hbpark@etnews.com