Within the context of the ISO/IEEE 11073 family of standards for device communication, a normative definition of the communication between personal basic electrocardiograph (ECG) devices and managers (e.g. cell phones, personal computers, personal health appliances, and set top boxes) in a manner that enables plug-and-play interoperability is established in ISO/IEEE11073-10406:2012.

Appropriate portions of existing standards including ISO/IEEE 11073 terminology and IEEE 11073-20601 information models are leveraged. The use of specific term codes, formats and behaviours in telehealth environments restricting optionality in base frameworks in favour of interoperability is specified. A common core of communication functionality for personal telehealth basic ECG (1- to 3-lead ECG) devices is defined. Monitoring ECG devices are distinguished from diagnostic ECG equipment with respect to support for wearable ECG devices, limiting the number of leads supported by the equipment to three, and not requiring the capability of annotating or analysing the detected electrical activity to determine known cardiac phenomena.

ISO/IEEE 11073-10406:2012 is consistent with the base framework and allows multifunction implementations by following multiple device specializations (e.g. ECG and respiration rate).