About the Project
-Wearable devices are rapidly transforming healthcare by enabling continuous, real-time monitoring of patients outside clinical settings. MEDWEAR is a community-driven initiative to create open standards for structuring and exchanging high-frequency data from medical wearables.
-We aim to address the fragmentation of the digital health ecosystem by building upon existing standardsβsuch as Open mHealth, HL7 FHIR, IEEE 11073, and openEHRβto define lightweight, extensible schemas suitable for modern sensing devices and middleware systems like ROS 2 and MQTT.
-Why Standardization Matters
-Although wearable technologies have become integral to modern healthcareβsupporting use cases from chronic disease management to preventive careβthe lack of common data formats hinders integration with EHRs, AI systems, and clinical decision tools. Over 80% of healthcare data remains unstructured and difficult to reuse.
-Standardizing wearable data supports interoperability, clinical utility, patient safety, and research reproducibility. MEDWEAR provides schemas and APIs that support high-frequency data, real-time streaming, and device-agnostic modeling to facilitate broad adoption and integration.
-About the Project
++ Wearable devices are rapidly transforming healthcare by enabling continuous, real-time monitoring + of patients outside clinical settings. MEDWEAR is a community-driven initiative funded by ETH Zurich's + Open Research Data initiative to create open standards for structuring and exchanging high-frequency + data from medical wearables. +
++ We address the fragmentation of the digital health ecosystem by building on existing standards - + Open mHealth, HL7 FHIR, IEEE 11073, and openEHR - to define lightweight, extensible schemas + suitable for modern sensing devices and middleware systems like ROS 2 and MQTT. +
+Collaborating Entities
--
-
- ETH Zurich - Open Research Data Initiative -
- SCAI Lab, ETH Zurich -
- DART Lab, Lake Lucerne Institute -
- UZH -
- SUPSI -
Why Standardization Matters
++ Although wearable technologies have become integral to modern healthcare - supporting use cases + from chronic disease management to preventive care - the lack of common data formats hinders + integration with EHRs, AI systems, and clinical decision tools. Over 80% of healthcare data + remains unstructured and difficult to reuse. +
++ Standardizing wearable data supports interoperability, clinical utility, patient safety, and + research reproducibility. MEDWEAR provides schemas and APIs that support high-frequency data, + real-time streaming, and device-agnostic modeling. +
+Key challenges addressed
+-
+
- Fragmented systems with incompatible data formats +
- Lack of EHR integration +
- Data privacy and regulatory constraints +
- Barriers to real-time, high-frequency data streaming +
- Limited clinical adoption and ROI evidence +
Challenges in Wearable Health Data
--
-
- Fragmented systems with incompatible formats -
- Lack of EHR integration -
- Data privacy and regulatory constraints -
- Low patient engagement and digital divide -
- Limited clinical adoption and ROI evidence -
- Barriers to real-time, high-frequency data streaming -
Standards & Design Principles
++ MEDWEAR schemas follow the + IEEE 1752-2021 + Standard + and are compatible with the Open + mHealth + framework, extending both to support high-frequency raw sensor streams. +
+-
+
- Vendor-agnostic - no dependency on proprietary device formats. +
- FAIR - Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. +
- Modular - signal schemas are self-contained and composable. +
- Middleware-ready - definitions ship as both JSON Schemas and ROS 2
.msg+ files.
+ - Extensible - new signal types can be added without breaking existing consumers. +
Comparative Overview of Standards
-We evaluate four key initiatives that inspire the MEDWEAR schema design:
+Relationship to existing standards
+| Standard | +Scope | +MEDWEAR relationship | +
|---|---|---|
| Open mHealth | +Structured JSON schemas for health data | +Base schema format; MEDWEAR extends it for raw, high-frequency signals | +
| IEEE + 1752.1-2021 | +Mobile health data quality and interoperability | +Normative reference for schema design and quality requirements | +
| HL7 FHIR | +Clinical data exchange (EHR integration) | +Target interoperability layer for clinical deployment | +
| openEHR | +Semantic clinical models | +Reference for clinical semantic precision | +
| IEEE 11073-PHD + | +Personal health device communication | +Informs device-level metadata modeling | +
-
-
- Open mHealth: Simple, modular JSON schemas for structured, contextual data. -
- HL7 FHIR: Granular RESTful resources widely used in clinical settings. -
- IEEE 11073-PHD: Device-specific standards for personal health devices, well-suited for discrete measures. -
- openEHR: Robust clinical models with semantic precision. -
Collaborating Institutions
+-
+
- ETH Zurich - Open Research Data Initiative +
- SCAI Lab, ETH Zurich +
- DART Lab, Lake Lucerne Institute +
- University of Zurich (UZH) +
- SUPSI +