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ICT for Health: Networks, standards and innovation

enabler for the reference implementation. First, a literature incentives when standards developers provide reference
review on open-source innovation was carried out to provide implementations of Recommendations. For example, inside
a theoretical background to this paper. Second, the OCF, "3- the ITU-T’s template for A.1 justification for a new work
pillar alignment" and IoTivity were introduced to offer a item (NWI) proposal [35], a new line asking for plans for
contextual background to this paper. Third, a case study on reference implementations of Recommendations could be
the authors' efforts to specification development for added. By the time of completion of the Recommendation,
healthcare devices in the OCF using IoTivity was illustrated. the draft Recommendation could be evaluated and consented
Finally, the benefits of taking advantage of IoTivity and the based on the reference implementation, which complies with
implications for better enabling healthcare IoT the proposed Recommendation.
standardization were discussed.
From the technological perspective, developing reference
6.1 Prospective future works implementations would require Recommendation
developers to take advantage of existing open-source
IoTivity was discussed as a best practice for a reference projects to save time and resource. During code development,
implementation of OCF specifications, as well as an enabler developers would seek guidance for external experts, which
of facilitating the healthcare IoT. To harmonize with other will in turn, produce more mature deliverables. From the
SDOs outside the OCF, however, ensuring interoperability marketing perspective, active participation in open-source
between different healthcare standards groups using a projects would result in better promotion and exposure of
universal healthcare bridge could be a next step forward. The ITU-T Recommendations.
OCF has already defined an OCF bridging specification to
specify a high-level framework to translate between OCF Taking into account some best practices in the industry
devices and other ecosystems [31]. including IoTivity, the authors strongly recommend that
ITU-T, within their core mandates, continue their efforts to
However, work on developing a specific healthcare interface seek the roles of open-source implementation for faster and
mapping standard is not yet initiated. For example, HL7 equal adoption of not only healthcare IoT but also their
FHIR specifies over 100 data formats and elements, APIs to overall Recommendations. Such efforts could lead to the
exchange electronic health records (EHR) in the medical active participation of developers who can provide codes
domain [32]. Similar to IoTivity, there exists an open-source immediately applicable to production and deployment,
project called HL7 Application Programming Interface which helps companies who are especially in need of
(HAPI) to provide reference implementations of HL7 FHIR standardization development resources. Such practice could
[33]. In this sense, connecting the OCF and HL7, by eventually facilitate wider adoption of ITU-T
developing an interface mapping standard could surely bring Recommendations.
synergy not only to the OCF and HL7 but also to future
healthcare IoT ecosystems. Such prospective work could be 7. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
accompanied by IoTivity and other possible open-source
activities for developers to understand the collaborating This work was supported by the Institute for Information &
standard more rapidly. communications Technology Promotion (IITP) grant funded
by the Korea government (MSIT) (No. 2019-0-00137,
6.2 Proposed efforts to ITU-T Standards Development of Platform and Networking
Interworking for IoT Interoperability).
International standards organizations are recognizing the
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