Accelerating Healthcare Transformation with IoT

IoT indicates devices with sensors, processors, and onboard software, which allow the devices to interconnect and exchange data. The devices are usually connected to a network.  

For clinical care  

In healthcare, IoT devices are usually wearables that collect data on patients’ health vitals like blood pressure, heart rate, body temperature, etc., and transmit them wirelessly to another device. This enables physicians to monitor patients’ health remotely outside a hospital or clinic.  

For Hospital Administration  

Regarding hospitals, IoT devices with sensors can be used to track medical equipment like oxygen cylinders and pumps, wheelchairs, defibrillators, etc. Moreover, IoT-based devices can also be used to monitor the refrigeration temperature, and humidity of storage spaces used to keep organic medical materials.  

IoT medical devices are devices fitted with sensors, dedicated software, and processing ability used for healthcare purposes. These devices gather real-time data and transmit it for analytics and subsequent decision-making.  

For example, an IoT-enabled wearable garment can detect the wearer’s health vitals like body temperature, sleep patterns, blood pressure, etc. This data is then gathered on a connected mobile application and sent to a doctor who can assess it and make a diagnosis or a prognosis. IoT-based medical devices have enormous applications in remote patient monitoring, where a doctor can monitor patients’ health from a distant location.   

This benefits elder care at assisted living centers and extends access to medical services to distant underserved locations. By gathering and transmitting data in real-time, IoT enables users to analyze the data for insights. In the case of healthcare, the medical data highlights patient conditions.  

• Compatibility of Devices  

IoT devices in a network need to be compatible with each other for smooth data interchange. However, since each of them would be made by a different company using different programming languages, information protocols, data formats, and standards, their compatibility tends to pose a major challenge.  

• Data Privacy  

IoT-enabled devices collect people’s medical data, which is private. However, they are vulnerable to cyber-attacks and data breaches, violating the privacy of patient data.   

• Data Management  

The data accumulated by IoT-powered medical devices would be in different formats and indicate different things, not to mention being in large quantities. Patient vitals must be stored, ordered, and assessed for actionable insights. So, managing this data can be a challenge.  

• Data Ownership  

The legislation surrounding data generated from healthcare IoT devices tends to vary from state to state. Although it is patients’ medical information, its collection, ownership, transfer, storage, and use pose ambiguities regarding ownership.  

IoT technology makes devices smarter. This means they can not only perform the function they were built for but also interconnect with other devices in a network and exchange relevant data in real-time. When it comes to healthcare, this data exchange goes a long way in improving the quality of patient care and day-to-day operations at hospitals.

IoT can usher in a new wave of remote patient monitoring, where doctors and patients need not be in the same building. Wearable technologies like smartwatches and garments can monitor a wide range of health vitals in real time. Some include smartwatches, exercise trackers, activity monitors, and garments that track vitals. These gadgets can track the wearer’s blood pressure, body temperature, heart rate, and ECG as long as they are worn. The data they accumulate is shared with doctors who can monitor the health of the wearer.  

This ability to monitor patients remotely helps providers with diagnoses outside of clinical settings. This has far-reaching applications for senior care, which is facing a shortage of caregivers. Moreover, this will enable people living in underserved locations to access specialist care without traveling far. Continuous real-time medical data enables providers to leverage analytics to predict who might be at higher risk. Such a predictive approach to care can transform medicine as we know it.  

Healthcare is driven by reliable data on the patient’s medical situation. By harnessing patients’ health information continuously and in real-time, IoT helps clinicians monitor patients’ health remotely. The data on patients is generated through wearable devices that include sensors to monitor health vitals and transmit them to providers.   

The data received by providers help in making diagnoses remotely. This has enormous implications for telehealth, where providers can offer medical services remotely. This is especially helpful during epidemics or pandemics when traveling to a clinic can be risky. Accessing medical services from one’s home can improve access to care for people living away from urban locations. Extension of access to medical services is one of the biggest impacts that IoT can have on the healthcare industry.

Although IoT healthcare solutions might not be the future of healthcare as a whole, there is no doubt that they have a large role to play. Data is the lifeblood of many industries, and healthcare is no different. Healthcare IoT solutions can collect continuous patient health data and transmit it reliably to providers at remote locations.  

Continuous real-time medical data on patients facilitates the use of cutting-edge analytics software, which harnesses insights about people’s health. In other words, it can help doctors identify high-risk patients early on and stage interventions. This ability to have a preventive approach to care can revolutionize how chronic diseases are treated and enable people to lead healthier lives. To sum it up, IoT solutions have an undeniable place in the future of the healthcare industry.  

IoT makes devices smarter. Devices that IoT powers can collect data, process it, and share it with other devices connected to a network. When it comes to healthcare, this ability to collect reliable medical data and share it for processing brings forth a layer of intelligence to clinical and administrative operations in healthcare.   

• Non-Clinical Administrative Workflows    

IoT solutions can track hospitals’ medical inventory, locations, movement, and usage. This includes equipment like defibrillators, oxygen pumps, ECG monitors, ventilators, and even wheelchairs. This streamlines day-to-day administrative activities at hospitals and gives rise to smart hospitals. Smart environments essentially exchange data that helps managers make informed decisions. The workflows at hospitals can become significantly smarter and more streamlined with IoT solutions.  

• Clinical Activities  

One of the biggest clinical applications of IoT is in wearable medical technology. These gadgets can be worn by a person and monitor and connect data on his or her vital signs. These signs may include heart rate, ECG, blood pressure, etc. The wearable devices collect this data and transmit it to doctors, who can assess them for a diagnosis. They can also sound out an alert in emergencies like heart attacks, seizures, and other factors that stray from normal vital signs.  

To sum it up, IoT makes devices in healthcare smarter through the exchange of real-time data. This directly leads to improvements in clinical and administrative operations at healthcare organizations.  

1. Smartwatches that detect heart rate, body temperature, and blood pressure.  
2. Activity trackers that track the intensity of exercise and physical activity  
3. Glucose monitor  
4. Ingestible sensors  
5. Fall detection (For seniors)  

An IoT-based healthcare system relies on devices that collect and exchange data in real time. This data could include patient vitals that would help doctors with diagnosis. In addition to this, IoT solutions can also be used to create smart hospitals, in which operational and administrative data is interchanged on an organization-wide network for streamlined workflows.  

In other words, an IoT-based healthcare system is based on smart devices with sensors, the data accumulated by those sensors, the network on which the devices are interconnected, and finally, the utilization of that data for medical and administrative activities at healthcare organizations.  

The future of IoT in healthcare would see the use of more sophisticated sensors and instruments used to collect medical data. In addition, as the healthcare industry continues to adopt IoT across the board, we can expect to see newer innovations and greater investments in the technologies to store and manage the growing body of data.  

Big data analytics would be a definite part of IoT-based healthcare since the amount of data is expected to grow exponentially in the years to come. Newer technologies powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning are expected to be deployed to analyze the growing body of data for usable insights.   

On the networking front, cloud computing technologies are expected to be used in healthcare IoT for data collection, storage, exchange, and management. As the industry adopts IoT at an increasingly higher rate, we expect to see a growing role in the cloud.