HIMSS Board Chair and Partners HealthCare deputy CIO Scott MacLean on Monday revealed a new collaboration between the Continua Health Alliance, HIMSS and the mHealth Summit.

“Health care is clearly moving in the direction of greater consumer engagement and delivery outside of traditional care settings,” said H. Stephen Lieber, president and CEO of HIMSS WorldWide.

Increasing consumer engagement is the catalyst for what the three founding members christened as the Personal Connected Health Alliance.

PCHA’s overarching mission, Lieber explained, will be to “promote the adoption of technology designed to produce highly informed and integrated solutions,” or what PCHA described as personalized health tools that meet lifestyle needs.

“The PCHA represents the future of health and wellness: a fully connected and personal focus on health,” said Jeremy Bonfini, PCHA executive vice president, adding that the “landmark collaboration” unites “three very different groups.”

Each member brings its own unique perspective to the collaboration, which will operate as “a separate HIMSS” organization designed to foster an ecosystem of health tools that encompasses consumers, policymakers, providers and health IT vendors, according to PCHA literature.

Continua carries its Design Guidelines based on global interoperability standards into the collaboration. The guidelines steer vendors toward “end-to-end, plug-and-play connectivity in personal connected health,” and Continua maintains that certification decreases time to market while reducing development costs and building security in from the beginning.

“Certifying a device with Continua guarantees that mandatory and optional functions implemented in a device will work with any other peer device that implements Continua requirements, and have backward and future compatibility with any Continua Certified product,” the PCHA literature explained. “The integration of multiple global standards into Continua’s Design Guidelines means that a certified product will have application in many markets — without further implementation.”

Working with HIMSS WorldWide and its global access enables Continua to extend its reach while the mHealth Summit will benefit from PCHA’s involvement.

“The mHealth Summit is a key cornerstone of this new entity and will once again be held in December in Washington D.C and is expanding its presence to Europe, Asia and the Middle East,” according to PCHA literature. “The PCHA will have a notable presence at each of these events.”