The IEEE Industrial Electronics Society is sponsoring a workshop on building Requirements for Digital Health Data Informatics & Interoperability.  Digital Health data is exceptionally valuable to Industry for keeping industry employees in good general health and pro-actively acting for potential exposures that can happen in an industry setting.  Data for health analysis can come from multiple sources including medical devices, medical records, consumer health measurement devices, digital twins and even some industry control devices and sensors.  This data provides multiple opportunities to assist the individual and business to pro-actively manage health situations. However, to reach these opportunities the data must be usefully organized, with security for all individuals, and accessibility to data with suitable authentication. This can be achieved with a suitable data organization with requirements and standards to address organization and accessibility. This opens major opportunities for efficient industry. The objective of this workshop is to define an informatics framework model with which we can build the requirement, standards, and security structures for successful uses.  This workshop technically partners with other IEEE societies.

This overall space of health management and its data represents an “elephant” of potential complexities. In the early days of the Internet, the effort did not consider the future and its broad impacts as it progressed. There are many complex elements, players, regulations, and standards. The opportunities are great however, we need to take a long vision of where it can potentially evolve to ensure that we are not just focused on one area of the “elephant” but assure we have the parts: solutions, standards, business, industry, and government work along a common theme to assure we cover the needs now and in the future.