24×7 Magazine has published my column “Is ISO/IEEE 11073 a Viable Standard?” in their Soapbox department. The column provides a bit of history, describes the contributions of the 11073 effort, and asks some hard questions about the standard - it's much more coherent than my previous ramblings on the subject.

Bottom line: the time for 11073 adoption is now, and the industry could use some facilitators to help with that adoption. Otherwise, the alternative (which so far seems to be XML-based web services) will be to formalize existing practice. I guess one or more alternative standards might possibly eclipse 11073 - there are interesting efforts underway by the Continua Health Alliance and the Medical Device Plug and Play lab.