IoT and Healthcare are going hand in hand nowadays. With the help of IoT in the healthcare system, physicians and patients come closer for automated and efficient monitoring of day-to-day work activities. IoT is improving the patients’ and providers’ experience by eliminating the ratio of errors generated in clinical processes.

According to Deloitte, the internet of medical things (IoMT) market worldwide is anticipated to increase to a $158b valuation in the year 2022, rising from $41b in 2017.

The Internet of Things is changing the way the Healthcare industry was functioning before a technology revolution. In this blog, we have mentioned various pain points tackled by the IoT in the most efficient ways.

Lack of efficiency

Gone are the days when patients had to wait in a long queue for just 5–10 minutes of a doctor’s visit. Now no need to worry about the inappropriate data collections in the hospitals as IoT is enhancing patient care in multiple ways.

IoT-connected sensors on hospital wristbands and medical devices gather patient’s data and send it to the cloud storage. Healthcare workers can operate that data from the cloud in real-time. It will mitigate the risks while manual data collection and entry into the system. IoT enables staff to use their time efficiently as well as decrease patients’ waiting time.

Patient’s critical information like heartbeats, blood pressure, and other essential changes in the body can be reported and monitored with IoT-connected devices in real-time. Doctors can easily determine the emergency and take action on the go without risking a patient’s life.

System Faults

No one can deny the fact that errors and faults of the medical system result in multiple deaths. But with the help of IoT, you can eliminate many errors in the healthcare industry.

Doctors’ can leverage IoT-connected wristbands to identify a patient and avoid duplication or mess-up with their data. They can acknowledge a patient’s health condition like a disturbance in heartbeats, any allergies, low-high BP, and other sensitive information. Along with all these, you will get error-free data records.

So IoT is a valuable tool for storing and checking patient’s data.

Rural sectors’ healthcare

IoT is providing personalized health service, video-based conversations, telemedicine, and future well-being tactics without asking patients to leave their villages.

With the help of connected IoT devices’ network, rural people can listen to a doctor who is sitting far away in a Metro hospital, ask them for health advice for any particular tests or X-rays, prescribe medicines, discuss reports, and work towards whether a patient needs to visit a nearby clinic for additional check-ups and medical processes. All can be done face to face through an internet-connected laptop screen.

Various IoT health startups have now come forward to transform the flow of the healthcare industry.

Healthcare Supply Chain

The healthcare industry is changing in the way goods and services are being provided as it is getting much smarter and efficient with new technology developments such as IoT.

Hospitals are using IoT to enable data analytics with their system-wide, cloud-based inventory management. It will help to connect products and procedures with their true value. A system-wide assessment needs a bunch of data, and with IoT, all the data can be collected, compiled, viewed, and acted upon to reach exact direct/indirect costs to make better decisions.

IoT offers connectivity and data sharing abilities through which hospitals can free up their health workers from inventory-related concerns. The hospitals can save largely with IoT by correctly balancing inventory levels that meet usage patterns, decreasing and rightly managing product expiration, mitigating patient risk, and also releasing capital.

Operational Expenses

IoT technology is also playing an important part in enhancing the efficiency of clinical operations. IoT automates most of the clinical workflow that will save overall time and costs.

IoT devices help with faster, easier, and improved data capturing and transferring compared to manual processes. When there is no need for more workforce, it means you can save on your operational expenses. This will also diminish the risk of expensive and time-consuming errors in data entry.

The IoT promises to enhance the quality of healthcare and cut costs. The advantages are important, but hospitals and payers must acknowledge the potential challenges of adopting IoT technology.

Chronic Disease Management

IoT is helping to enhance patients’ health who are having chronic situations. The mixture of remote monitoring, smart devices, and analytics have cut readmission of high-risk patients with congestive heart failure (CHF) by a large part.

Additionally, accessible and affordable devices like heartbeat and blood pressure monitors enhance the overall well-being of chronically ill patients.

Connected wheelchairs allow patients to communicate with health care providers on a greater level, engaging health alerts to health care teams and repair alerts to manufacturers.

IoT guarantees to improve practitioner’s awareness and skills and apply advanced technology to accomplish the goal of efficient and patient-centered care, and overall improved health conditions for chronically ill patients.

Summing Up

Not only the Internet of Things, all the IoT devices and their networks are required to be integrated to aid the healthcare industry in a meaningful way.

IoT is transforming the healthcare industry along with data, speedy communication, high security, and compliance. 5G technology will serve the ultra-low latency speeds and flexibility that is the key requirement in IoT healthcare.

Eventually, IoT and healthcare will be inseparable in the coming years. They will disrupt the ways people are approaching healthcare.

Source: https://medium.com/@siliconithubusa/what-are-the-pain-points-addressed-by-iot-in-healthcare-214df626fdee

When it comes to shaping the future of the healthcare sector, technologies such as AI, AR, and VR play a significant role. When you look at the phenomenal growth of these technologies and include the Internet of Things with it, you will get the next generation’s health edge.

IoT has the unique ability to provide real-time vision, which is essential in the health space. It is amazing to assume what the future of healthcare could be if IoT would be extended.

The CES digital health summit 2020 spotted an enormous number of companies in the market with IoT products for Healthcare like intelligent home cameras to track seniors’ activities at home, care robots, and smart speakers.

Integration of IoT in healthcare has borne out various leading-edge medical devices that are streamlining complicated problems primarily faced by doctors and patients.

The IoT in Healthcare Market is anticipated to rise at a rate of 19.8% from USD 60.83b in the year 2019 to USD 260.75b in the year 2027.

Ways IoT is Streamlining Healthcare Sector

The Origin of IoT in the healthcare industry has remarkably enhanced healthcare services. Here are some ways how IoT is transforming healthcare for a better future.

Robotic Devices 

Generally, it is a surgeon’s task to manually operate a patient for his/her multiple health issues. This whole process was very time-consuming and also risky for the patient’s health.

IoT has served new ways for surgeons to perform critical operations reliably and in the shortest time with the help of robotic medical devices.

For example, Brooks rehabilitation center developed a modern spine treatment to enhance a patient’s walking capability based on modern robotics. This IoT device in the medical sector is known as HAL (Hybrid Assistive Limb). Individuals need to wear it as it can be monitored by the brain signals to fit the lower body and upper body.

Digital Data Gathering 

Most of the time, patients need to be dependent on different health monitoring devices like injections, blood pumps, ventilators, heart monitors, and whatnot. It was also a tough nut to crack for health workers to track needed data from all the different devices for each patient. It can also cause multiple errors while gathering this bunch of data.

With the IoT EHR (Electronic Health Record) system, it is possible to transfer any amount of data automatically without compromising accuracy. Automated data transmission aiding health workers to be focused more on the patient’s health rather than manual data collection.

Broadened Doctor Reach

The IoT and healthcare sector together expanded doctor reach to their patients. Utilizing live streaming video calls, it is very easy for doctors to communicate with their patients always and everywhere. It is time-savvy as patients do not have to wait in the long queue for a face-to-face meeting.

For example, multiple booths placed near hospitals have sensors within them to monitor a patient’s body temperature, blood pressure, weight, and other significant symptoms. Moreover, patients can also remotely contact available physicians using installed video cameras.

Improved Patient Experience with health monitoring

As IoT-based healthcare services are increasing, the number of people visiting doctors physically is decreasing. Patients nowadays just need to log in to a health app from their smart devices to consult any doctors from the comfort of their home through video calling.

The health apps also help patients store and share their medical details with doctors, such as blood pressure, heartbeats, temperature, or other critical symptoms.

iOS health apps help you to keep track of your health and assist reach your physical fitness goal. It can merge data from the Apple Watch, iPhone, or other third-party apps and show total progress at the right spot.

You can monitor how much distance you have traveled until now, the total time you have spent on your exercise, how many calories you have burned, track your sleeping hours, how much nutrition you have consumed through your foods.

Summing Up

Automation. Comfort. Efficiency. These are the three words defining all about the IoT. IoT is a transformative technology that has been creating a buzz in each industry niche, and healthcare is not an exception.

The use of modern technology in healthcare has been progressing consistently, using powerful devices such as asthma monitors, connected inhalers, and smart insulin pens. All these Internet of things-connected smart devices help individuals to fulfill their own health needs.

IoT is easing medical treatment, preventing disease, and helping healthcare.

Source: https://bit.ly/3lDd7ad

Prior to IoT, doctors and patients interact through phone calls, text messages, or face-to-face visits. There is no other option for the doctors to monitor their patients on a timely basis and to suggest necessary health-relevant steps.

Nonetheless, the transformation of IoT in healthcare has drastically changed the scenario. It has empowered healthcare providers to offer supreme care by remotely monitoring the patients through IoT-enabled devices.

Consulting a doctor is now just like walking in the park, and that’s why it has increased patients’ engagement rate. The Internet of Things is revolutionizing the healthcare sector and is valuable to hospitals, clinics, doctors, patients, and healthcare workers.

In this article, we will understand exactly why the healthcare industry needs the Internet of Things.

1. Converting data into actionable information

A patient’s health that is measurable will be the future of the healthcare sector as it could be easier to improve. IoT assesses an entire database to obtain actionable insights professionals can leverage for earlier and more informed decision-making.

IoT enables huge computational power to learn different patterns across a few hundred thousand patients. It will allow doctors to react rapidly and tackle a health condition before it becomes crucial. Object measurement and health tracking are necessary for better outcomes, and that is why healthcare needs the Internet of Things.

2. Better Health

Wearable devices such as fitness bands and other wire-free connected devices such as blood pressure, heart rate monitoring, and glucometer enable patients to give more attention to their health condition. These devices are adopted to inform about calorie count, watch out on exercise, appointments, BP changes, and whatnot!

IoT considers each tiny detail about the patient’s health status to make the most beneficial decisions, especially for elderly patients. It has impacted majorly on people living alone and with their families. On any variation or disturbance in the day-to-day activities of an individual, the alert mechanism notifies family members by sending signals so that they consult health providers at the right time.

3. Digital Preventive Healthcare

The Medical Internet of Things is at the core of the digital healthcare system, and henceforth it is an essential element of digital prevention. It is concerned with all stages of digital prevention that includes, preventing the origin of disease through determining risk factors and disease studies, diagnose with digital diagnostic tools, medications that leverage digital tools to associate with healthcare providers, consultations, remedies, and track the prediction via real-time communications among patients and health professionals.

IoT plays a major role in patient health data management created either by the care providers or patient-generated health data. Healthcare IoT handles multiple stores with cloud systems. It syncs and provides huge amounts of data gathered from patients that assist in the clinical decision-making procedure.

4. Improve Patient Engagement and Satisfaction

Connecting objects and people, the Internet of Things has started actually affecting patient engagement and satisfaction. RPM (Remote Patient Monitoring) devices obtain information like important signals and sleeping activities and send those data to healthcare providers to manage a patient’s care.

RPM devices also enhance patient engagement. When patients are directly concerned about monitoring their medical details, it will help generate awareness about their health.

RPM technology can connect with other systems such as EHR, transfer data easily through the cloud, and mitigate the need for the workforce to manually enter the data.

The smartphone app nowadays offers existing ER waiting times, assists patients find a way out in the hospital, connects patients to their Electronic Health Record (EHR), provides appointment reminders, and sends location details to services and healthcare staff.

5. Better Population Health Management

Healthcare organizations leverage IoT to improve their population health management abilities such as monitoring of wearables’ growth, improved home monitoring of chronic diseases, managing the EHR blanks using patient-generated health details, use of social media platforms for predictive analysis, and enhancing device integration for superior patient safety.

The enormous growth of IoT in the Healthcare sector compelled Healthcare organizations to look for the right, more efficient, and effective processes to keep their patients in good health and good mood.

It shows how IoT can prove to be a vital factor to improve patient management that results in happier and healthier patients.

Challenges in implementing IoT in Healthcare

Each opportunity comes with some obstacles, and healthcare is no exception. One will face many challenges while integrating the Internet of Things with the Healthcare system.

1. InterOperability

As the number of IoT devices increases, interoperability turns into a new challenge. Collected data from the EKG monitoring device or an asthma device often shared directly with the specialist who is operating the patient, but not to the primary care physician. The data exists in storehouses, isolated by vendors.

The other obstacle is to keep tracking devices and maintaining them when they go beyond the hospital network. A physician might send any patient home with any device, and the IT department does not have any information about that.

So choose a tech partner who delivers powerful app integration platforms with the use of microservices and APIs.

2. Data Security

Security is also a nitty-gritty concern as so much data is being produced by a diverse range of IoT devices.

Furthermore, data accuracy, or the virtue of the information generated by the Internet of Things, is essential. Ultimately, this is the data that helps in making medical and business decisions.

So choose a cloud platform to store all the operations and the changes being made on the patient’s health data.

3. EHR Integration

Data acquisition from multiple IoT-connected personal health care devices and incorporating it into a patient’s Electronic Health Records (EHR) is crucial and complex as well. If the patient’s healthcare team can use the information, it must perfectly integrate with the EHR. But the data from the devices and wearables are often enclosed in the vendor’s storehouses or the apps. So the physicians are not able to view the data and can’t act accordingly.

The use of APIs and microservices can solve this concern by enabling different software to connect securely.

The Future 

As per Grand View Research, the IoT remote health monitoring market worldwide is anticipated to make more than $300b by the end of 2022.

The technology, therefore, possesses a strengthening future offering independent and mobile health monitoring while mitigating the pressure to visit physicians and health personnel.

Source: https://bresdel.com/blogs/82723/Why-introduce-IoT-in-the-Healthcare-sector