Lessons learned from the implementation of remote control for the interoperability standard ISO/IEEE11073-20601 in a...

The Point of Care (PoC) version of the interoperability standard ISO/IEEE11073 (X73) provided a mechanism to control remotely agents through documents X73-10201 and X73-20301. The newer version of X73 oriented to Personal Health Devices (PHD) has no mechanisms to do such a thing. The authors are working toward a common proposal with the PHD Working Group (PHD-WG) in order to adapt the remote control capabilities from X73PoC to X73PHD. However, this theoretical adaptation has to be implemented and tested to evaluate whether or not its inclusion entails an acceptable overhead and extra cost. Such proof-of-concept assessment is the main objective of this paper. For the sake of simplicity, a weighing scale with a configurable operation was chosen as use case. First, in a previous stage of the research - the model was defined. Second, the implementation methodology - both in terms of hardware and software - was defined and executed. Third, an evaluation methodology to test the remote control features was defined. Then, a thorough comparison between a weighing scale with and without remote control was performed. The results obtained indicate that, when implementing remote control in a weighing scale, the relative weight of such feature represents an overhead of as much as 53%, whereas the number of Implementation Conformance Statements (ICSs) to be satisfied by the manufacturer represent as much as 34% regarding the implementation without remote control. The new feature facilitates remote control of PHDs but, at the same time, increases overhead and costs, and, therefore, manufacturers need to weigh this trade-off. As a conclusion, this proof-of-concept helps in fostering the evolution of the remote control proposal to extend X73PHD and promotes its inclusion as part of the standard, as well as it illustrates the methodological steps for its extrapolation to other specializations.