Facilitating Healthcare IoT Standardization with Open Source: A Case Study on OCF and IoTivity

Healthcare Internet of things (IoT) opens up seamless opportunities by unleashing possibilities to implement better healthcare services. Increased interest in this led to active standardization in various standards development organizations (SDOs). However, the proliferation of different international healthcare standards has not brought about full deployment of healthcare IoT services and business opportunities in the healthcare domain. Nevertheless, there have been some efforts to take advantage of open-source projects as an enabler to facilitate better deployment of healthcare IoT standards. In this paper, the authors develop a case study of their efforts to standardize healthcare IoT with IoTivity, with the Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF). Then they discuss the benefits of IoTivity and how it has led to the enhancement of standardization efficiency and acceleration in healthcare IoT. The authors conclude by recommending ITU-T to continue their efforts to seek the roles of open-source implementation for faster adoption of not only healthcare IoT standards but also their overall Recommendations.