This survey paper serves as an introduction to the challenges and needs related to wireless personal telehealth systems and provides an overview of ongoing activities in industry and various communication standards, aiming to enable plug-and-play interoperability. Specifically, we address a recently founded industry consortium, the Continua Health Alliance, and ongoing standardization efforts within the family of ISO 11073/IEEE 1073 standards, the Bluetooth SIG, and the ZigBee Alliance.