The ZigBee Alliance, which includes Freescale, Samsung and ST, has completed development of an application profile for the wireless comms standard aimed at remote healthcare monitoring.
Specifically, the ZigBee Health Care public application profile will support secure monitoring and management of non-critical, low-acuity healthcare services targeted at chronic disease management, obesity and ageing.
It also provides full support for IEEE 11073 devices including glucometers, pulse oximeters, electrocardiographs, weight scales, thermometers, blood pressure monitors and respirometers.
"ZigBee Health Care gives fitness centres, medical care facilities and consumers the ability to connect an almost unlimited number of health monitoring devices with ease and privacy,” said Dr. Robert F. Heile, chairman of the ZigBee Alliance.
So what would the likely market be? A recent report by ON World, "WSN for Healthcare" estimates that wireless sensor networks can reduce annual health care costs by $25bn by 2012.
Members of the ZigBee Alliance include Ember, Freescale Semiconductor, Philips, Samsung, Siemens, STMicroelectronics and Texas Instruments.
For more on the ZigBee wireless standard