How IoT Is Redefining the Healthcare Sector in 2021
‘The Internet of Things (IoT) offers immense potential to revolutionise medical treatment and improve global health indexes in healthcare.’
Doctors and patients can benefit from the automated, asynchronous medical data flow when treating chronic diseases and critical health issues.
Patients currently engage with doctors during in-person visits. They are diagnosed, treated (typically after being tested), or advised on additional procedures. This works well for common illnesses like the flu or a cold.
But does it work well for those with severe medical conditions? Patients with chronic diseases require constant attention and monitoring. Still, they also find it more challenging to schedule ad-hoc doctor appointments when needed.
Individuals who suffer from chronic illnesses, require continual monitoring, and reside in rural locations with limited access to medical care could benefit from IoT in healthcare. We’ll take a closer look at IoT’s possibilities in the healthcare business in this post.
Internet of Things and how it works
IoT (Internet of Things) is a system of connected computing devices or machines, each having its unique identifier and the ability to share data with other devices without the need for human or computer interaction.
Thousands of IoT devices can form part of such networks, forming a massive ecosystem. As a result, the healthcare industry, like virtually every other industry, can benefit from IoT in various ways.
The Internet of Things dominates today’s world. However, we already have all the necessary software and hardware to allow tens of thousands of devices to connect in real-time.
Because of powerful processors, increasing memory, Bluetooth, WiFi, and 5G, robust and complex systems that constantly transfer and analyse data are already being deployed. Besides, each piece of data has a date and time of issue, allowing for real-time or near-live sharing.
How Can the Healthcare Industry Benefit From IoT
We also have several sensing technologies in existing software and hardware in health-related mobile apps and wearable gadgets such as fitness trackers, pulse oximeters, blood pressure watches, EEG headbands, and several others. Some are used in hospitals to track medical indicators. Others, on the other hand, are voluntarily used at home to track real-time health data.
When combined with Data Engineering, these connected IoT devices could enable remote monitoring and improve healthcare operations. They could track multiple indicators and use real-time data to help healthcare professionals, patients, and smart hospitals communicate more efficiently.
Doctors could easily access patients’ data remotely and respond as soon as symptoms are discovered, eliminating the need for an actual visit to the doctor’s office. For dealing with the pandemic more efficiently, a similar approach has already been implemented in several healthcare facilities in Oregon.
Meanwhile, because of integration issues that necessitate manual data sharing with external systems, the use of IoT devices in healthcare is still limited.
Data privacy and security are also critical components of this equation.
Nonetheless, we already have all of the technologies we need to take advantage of IoT analytics’ potential to improve medical treatment. Moreover, a slew of startups is working to close the gap. So, well, let’s have a closer look at some of the IoT’s healthcare benefits.
Opportunities in healthcare IoT
Existing medical devices can be programmed to connect to other devices or a data centre to exchange data as soon as it becomes available automatically. This opens up plenty of previously untapped opportunities in the healthcare industry.
Precision medicine
Medical IoT devices could continuously collect new live data, allowing doctors and healthcare providers to make more informed diagnoses based on various indicators. Live or near-live data streaming, on the other hand, can be used for more than just data collection.
Data could be used for IoT analytics to support more sophisticated healthcare processes, such as monitoring a patient’s heart rate, blood pressure, insulin level, and body temperature with multiple connected medical devices. In addition, more accurate diagnoses can be made using comprehensive data gathered over a long period rather than isolated tests.
Patient-tailored treatment to patients
Precision medicine is the name of this approach, which involves developing treatments unique to each patient and based on various health indicators. In this scenario, doctors can also treat patients asynchronously because they can log into the system to consult a patient’s health results and access all the data collected to make decisions about future medical procedures.
When immediate patient care is required, IoT devices could be programmed to alert medical professionals. IoT devices might potentially be designed to alert medical personnel quickly if immediate patient care is required.
Precision medicine powered by IoT could enable continuous remote monitoring of non-critical patients at home, reducing the frequency of medical sessions and lowering the unnecessary costs of chronic illness care.
Doctors and healthcare facilities alike would benefit from increased capacity to focus on individuals with critical health issues. Ongoing remote patient monitoring can also help reduce stress for persons in need of medical care, allowing them to recover faster.
Computer-based decision-making
IoT in healthcare, aided by EDGE technology, can allow computers to make judgments in place of humans. At the moment, EDGE solutions are evolving at the speed of light. When gathering data, such devices are capable of doing preliminary calculations. These computations might be expanded to include algorithms and other advanced features that would enable them to perform IoT analytics.
Such analytics might be used, for example, to determine the meaning of a specific EED signal. Such data can then be used to power faster, automated diagnostics. The IoT analytics solutions are already being used to perform fundamental medical analyses, such as informing patients about their cholesterol levels or alerting people with diabetes when their next insulin shot is due. In reality, the most recent intelligent gadgets are capable of delivering insulin as needed.
Let us now examine how Automated Insulin Delivery (AID) works.
Case Study: Automated Insulin Supply
RAID systems are an excellent illustration of how IoT, data engineering, and healthcare can all work together to save lives. For example, people with diabetes benefit from AID systems, which harness the full potential of digital medicine.
They include a programmed insulin pump, an infusion set with a flexible tube, and a wireless Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM) that the patient must wear at all times.
The CGM is outfitted with a sensor that collects live or near-live blood glucose level data and other diabetic-relevant indications. They retrieve the data even when the patient is sleeping. This method eliminates the need for finger-prick tests, making it extremely easy for patients.
When the measures fall below the adequate thresholds, the insulin pump kicks in. Besides, live data is shared with clinicians to allow for more comprehensive analysis. This type of analysis uses more extensive patient data and applies additional algorithms to those found in the CGM.
The Internet of Things (IoT) in healthcare promises more advanced and individualised treatments.
The Internet of Things revolutionises healthcare by placing patients considerably closer to doctors to improve their comfort and safety. Also, it can significantly improve the quality of care they receive — by continuously measuring different health indicators, healthcare practitioners can draw more precise judgments about a patient’s health.
In persons with chronic illnesses, ongoing remote patient monitoring is particularly critical — something that overworked healthcare organisations cannot achieve without the assistance of technology.
IoT analytics solutions can solve a wide range of healthcare concerns and improve the overall quality of healthcare operations and services. For example, automated and data-driven decision-making can remove potential human errors while also lowering healthcare expenses. As a result, healthcare providers, technology specialists, and data engineers should collaborate to deliver healthcare solutions that benefit people’s health.
