IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - November/December 2020 - 96

Consumer Technology Association

face-to-face meetings. It is impressive that the
schedule impact was not greater.
There is one area where the coronavirus pandemic absolutely accelerated technology adoption
in the U.S., and that is telehealth. According to data
from United Healthcare, by May 2020, 30% of Americans had experienced telehealth services, tremendous growth over the 8% who had reported using
telehealth services by December 2019. In April of
this year, CTA and the American Telemedicine
Association launched a new website of telehealth
technology solutions that features a growing list of
digital health resources-from remote monitoring
to telemedicine-to assist the health care industry
during the coronavirus outbreak.
We see the same pace of development in
CTA's health-related standards work. This space
is already our fastest growing area. The most
recent additions are a new working group to
develop a standard for "Performance Criteria
and Testing Protocols for Respiration Monitoring Solutions" and a new project to provide best
practices for measurement and tracking of vital
signs by remote patient monitoring solutions,
called a Vital Signs Toolkit. These are on top of
existing CTA standards for sleep tracking, physical activity and heart rate monitoring, stress
monitoring and guiding principles for virtual
care and mobile health solutions.
The sudden orders to stay at home upended
education in the U.S. and around the world. For

Consumer Technology Society members in the
academic field, hats off to you. We learned the
importance of group instruction by teachers in a
school environment, especially for elementary
through high school grades. But schools were
closed-often with just a few days' notice. Without technology, there would have been no
instruction at all, other than what families could
muster at home. Teachers used the technologies
Consumer Technology Society members have
spent years developing to record lessons or host
virtual classrooms, and students, who all grew
up as digital natives, engaged from home. We
also learned that high-speed internet access is
critical, as is access to laptops or tablets.
We have a long way to go, but I am encouraged
that our members work tirelessly to improve
access to consumer technologies. These technologies have been a lifeline and a means to connect
when we could not visit each other socially or collaborate in person professionally.
I look forward to the time we can work
together again in-person to fulfill the society's
mission to bring more innovative consumer
technologies to life. That mission is more meaningful today than ever.

Brian Markwalter is with the Consumer Technology Association, Arlington, VA, USA. Contact him at
bmarkwalter@cta.tech.

IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine

IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - November/December 2020

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