IoT has created a wide range of opportunities to transform how healthcare service providers engage patients and manage care delivery outside of the traditional boundaries of the clinical environment. Prior to the introduction of IoT in healthcare, patient care delivery and management were restricted to the hospital, in-person consultations, and sometimes telecommunication. Continuous patient monitoring was practically impossible. With Internet-enabled healthcare devices, a connected device network can be set up to continuously monitor a patient’s condition and promptly provide care in case of a critical change.
As healthcare IoT technologies mature, patient visibility and remote care will improve treatment adherence and outcomes, reduce hospital stays, and improve resource allocation efficiency. Wearables, connected devices, implants, and other monitoring devices will maintain a constant stream of patient data to healthcare service providers, allowing for improved and personalized remote care.
What Is IoT In Connected Healthcare?
Connected healthcare through IoT involves the incorporation of a network of connected medical devices and sensors to collect and share health data. Examples of these types of devices include healthcare monitoring devices for heart rate, blood pressure, blood glucose, oxygen saturation, and activity levels.
Connected healthcare offers a variety of layers. In the device layer, medical equipment collects healthcare data. In the layers of e-healthcare, connectivity and data transport are provided through technologies and services. Once healthcare data are collected in the cloud or at the edge, healthcare services or applications integrate healthcare data with patient and care delivery dashboards and alert clinicians through healthcare service integrations with the electronic health record (EHR).
This structure extends healthcare beyond hospitals and clinics. These connected healthcare applications can work in and between homes, workplaces, and mobile environments, which makes continuous monitoring and care possible from a remote location.
The Importance of IoT in Remote Healthcare
Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) is one of the most notable ways IoT helps to advance healthcare. RPM uses a connected device to collect data about the patient and sends that information to the healthcare professional in real-time. This aids in the management of chronic conditions and allows a healthcare professional to act on changes in a patient’s condition.
Devices are available to continually record and transmit information on the user’s heart rate, blood pressure, glucose readings, and levels of activity. Healthcare professionals see the information and do not need to confer with the patient as frequently. This helps the physician manage the patient’s health and avoid or manage health issues.
Remote patient monitoring has the ability to greatly reduce the cost of healthcare by helping to manage patients and avoid unnecessary hospital visits. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission forecasted a savings of $700 billion over the next two decades from the combination of remote patient monitoring and electronic health records.
The Benefits of IoT in Healthcare Wearables
Healthcare wearables have provided users with the ability to monitor their health continuously. Devices such as blood pressure monitors, heart rate monitors, glucometers, and many more help patients keep a better record of their health, while also keeping their healthcare provider apprised.
Health management devices can remind users to track their calorie intake, exercise, keep up with their appointments, log their blood pressure, etc. Devices like Fitbit and Apple Watch have made it more fun for people to take an active role in tracking their health.
The convenience of active health tracking can be especially important for older patients. Changes and disturbances in their daily routines can be monitored by active health tracking, and family members and care providers can receive notifications.
IoT Medical Devices and Implants
In addition to personal health management devices, other health management solutions utilize the Internet of Things. These solutions can use medical implants that can transmit data to health providers in order to help personalize treatment and enable earlier diagnosis.
This type of medical implant can potentially be used to monitor changes in physiological and biochemical conditions to personalize dosage for medication interventions.
Ultimately, IoT can revolutionize healthcare from periodic health management to real-time health condition management for providers outside the clinical setting. Instead of waiting for the next appointment for information and data, providers can manage a patient’s health outside the clinic.
IoT Applications in Healthcare
There are solutions in patient health management and health management operational services that utilize the Internet of Things.
Health monitoring: With IoT technology, devices can be created to provide real-time data on monitored patients’ health, such as adherence to medication, vital signs, and health management. Healthcare providers can take real-time actions to manage their patients’ health based on information gathered from these IoT-enabled devices.
Medication management: Internet-of-Things-based medication dispensers provide reminders to take medication, administer the right dosage, and record real-time medication adherence data. They can also send missed medication alerts and dose alerts to healthcare professionals.
Smart hospital infrastructure: Direct communication from materially connected infusion pumps and patient monitors to electronic health records (EHR) systems enables seamless and timely decision-making.
IoT-enabled telemedicine: Connected devices can support virtual medical consultations and patient assessments by care providers in remote and underserved healthcare destinations.
Hospital asset tracking: Sensors can locate hospital assets in real time. Hospitals can also analyze the distribution of staff across different hospital locations.
How Cloud Computing Supports Healthcare IoT
Healthcare connected devices generate large volumes of data. Cloud computing enables and provides the necessary tools and resources to support data scalability and real-time monitoring. This helps healthcare practioner to make informed decisions, based on data analysis and insights.
Cloud-based systems improves information exchange by facilitating connected devices to communicate within healthcare networks. They also provide infrastructure for complex data processing, machine learning, and predictive analytics.
Machine learning can complement large datasets by finding new, and in some cases, more important, data patterns. Predictive analytics helps healthcare organizations identify potential future health events. For example, analyzing the combined data of historic vital signs and other environmental data, including pollution data and dust levels, can predict the asthma attack trigger.
Connected healthcare converts many diverse technologies such as connectivity, IoT, healthcare data standards, protocols, security, edge computing, and medical-grade hardware into a cohesive whole.
Bluetooth Low Energy is utilized in wearables, while hospital facilities use Wi-Fi. Cellular technologies in the form of LTE-M and NB-IoT provide wide-area monitoring to devices located far away from the hospital. Frameworks such as MQTT and CoAP provide low-power data transfer.
Healthcare data standards such as HL7 and FHIR facilitate interoperability of data across healthcare systems. End-to-end encryption, secure boot, and device authentication provide security and protection of healthcare data.
IoT and connected healthcare lead to improved clinical outcomes through the availability of real-time information. Healthcare professionals are able to implement earlier interventions and reduce hospital readmissions.
Connected healthcare technology increases the operational effectiveness of healthcare providers through task automation and improved healthcare provider access to patient information through integration of healthcare providers’ EHRs. Users are also able to self-manage healthcare.
Healthcare IoT systems go beyond patient monitoring. Connected systems provide asset, inventory, and hygiene system automation and monitor the environment, including temperature control of refrigerators and the level of humidity.
Connected healthcare IoT implementation is challenged by concerns about patient data safety and privacy. Healthcare organizations are required to comply with many regulations. This can increase the overall cost and the complexity of implementation.
Technical impediments exist in the deployment of connected healthcare services. Variations in the level of service might exist across different regions. Some healthcare devices run on batteries, meaning battery life requirements and lifespan are important; healthcare organizations run the risk of scalability and operational inefficiency while integrating large volumes of data across multiple systems.
There are issues related to interoperability. Healthcare systems that rely on legacy systems and proprietary technology create information silos that inhibit the free flow of data.
The Internet of Things (IoT) has the potential to connect healthcare systems to patients beyond the confines of traditional healthcare systems. Some of the applications of connected healthcare spill over into homes, work, and mobile environments. Examples include the extension of healthcare services to remote patient monitoring, telemedicine, smart medical devices, elderly care, clinical research, and hospital asset tracking.
The value of an Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem in healthcare will be measured by the extent to which it connects devices and healthcare professionals, and the extent to which it enables the healthcare ecosystem to generate actionable insights through cloud computing and large-scale data analysis and machine learning. Improving the experience of connected healthcare will be the real value proposition to healthcare organizations. This is likely to lead to the proactive use of IoT in remote patient monitoring and improve other healthcare outcomes.
