ISO/IEEE 11073-10471:2010 establishes a normative definition of the communication between independent living activity hubs and managers (e.g., cell phones, personal computers, personal health appliances and set top boxes) in a manner that enables plug-and-play (PnP) interoperability. It leverages appropriate portions of existing standards including ISO/IEEE 11073 terminology and information models. It specifies the use of specific term codes, formats, and behaviors in telehealth environments restricting ambiguity in base frameworks in favour of interoperability.

ISO/IEEE 11073-10471:2010 defines a common core of communication functionality for independent living activity hubs. In this context, independent living activity hubs are defined as devices that communicate with simple situation monitors (binary sensors), normalize information received from the simple environmental monitors, and provide this normalized information to one or more managers. This information can be examined (for example) to determine when a person's activities/behaviour have deviated significantly from what is normal for them such that relevant parties can be notified. Independent living activity hubs will normalize information from the following simple situation monitors (binary sensors) for the initial release of the proposed standard: fall sensor, motion sensor, door sensor, bed/chair occupancy sensor, light switch sensor, smoke sensor, (ambient) temperature threshold sensor, personal emergency response system (PERS), and enuresis sensor (bed-wetting).

ISO/IEEE 11073-10471:2010 addresses a need for an openly defined, independent standard for controlling information exchange to and from personal health devices and managers