IEEE 11073
The standards family for how medical devices describe themselves and their measurements — the device-side counterpart to FHIR.
In one line
IEEE 11073 standardises medical-device semantics — a shared nomenclature of measurement types, units, and device models — so a blood-pressure reading means the same thing regardless of vendor.
How it works
The family splits into Point-of-Care standards (bedside monitors, ventilators) and Personal Health Device (PHD) standards (the -104xx series: thermometers, scales, glucose meters, pulse oximeters). At its heart is a coded nomenclature (MDC codes) for observables and units, plus device information models describing capability. The Bluetooth SIG health profiles and HL7's Personal Health Devices FHIR IG both build on it: BLE carries the bytes, 11073 gives them meaning, FHIR carries them into records.
Where it shows up in digital health
Any serious device-integration project: mapping vendor streams into MDC-coded
observations, then into FHIR Observation/Device/DeviceMetric resources.
Connectathon-tested gateways (and this platform's future IoT lab) walk exactly that
chain — radio → 11073 semantics → FHIR.