Now is the era where technology is evolving rapidly and changing the face of every sector including food, agriculture, and others. Likewise, the healthcare sector has also seen huge progress due to evolving technology.
IoT is the game-changer technology in the healthcare industry. Increase in healthcare and technology, where providers opportunity improves the experience of the patient and operates effectively by sharing information and the augmented association. Thus, solutions to healthcare technology are modernizing medical care, mechanizing the manual procedure, reducing costs, and duplicating the rules.
An increase in IoT is exciting for people because of the scope of use in different sectors. There are various applications of IoT in healthcare:
Real-Location Monitoring
In the connected devices, real-time monitoring secure lives in medical emergencies such as asthma attacks, diabetes, heart failure, and more. A smart medical device connected to a smartphone app is collecting the medical and necessary data of health. However, transferring the collected data to the physician is using the data connection of a smartphone.
The device of IoT is collecting and transferring the health data of different parameters such as ECGs, weight, blood sugar level, blood pressure, and more. Thus, the data is stored in the device and can share information with the physician, insurance company, or health consultant.
Read more: Health Care Innovation: Harnessing New Technologies To Benefit Patients
Medical Assistance In Remote Areas
During an emergency, IoT is providing the facility that patients can directly contact the doctor who is far away by using smart mobile apps. Different mobility solution helps to monitor the health of a patient and identify different disease. Healthcare delivery chains are responsible for building machines and distribute drugs considering the prescription of a patient.
Evaluating Hand Hygiene
Evaluating hand hygiene is the most important application of IoT in the healthcare industry. Various IoT devices are having the potential of recognizing the level of cleanliness of different workers of healthcare. Several patients are suffering from an infection because of improper hand hygiene in public hospitals.
Many of the patients are leading this infection to severe disease and results in death. With the help of a new application, it is very easy to gather all the information about healthcare workers like time, ID, and location and store it in the database of devices.
Prophecy of Patients Arrival
Internet of Things helps clinicians to foretell the arrival of a patient recovering in PACU (Post-Anesthesia Care Unit). This also supports medical professionals to keep track of the status of patients health in real-time.
Biometric Sensors
Biometric sensors are primarily very important in the medical field. These sensors are capable of generating specific medical data and are an epitome for body monitoring. They can monitor the sleep patterns appropriately, calorie intake, heart rate, and quality of sleep.
By using different healthcare methods based on technology, various benefits help in improving the quality and effective treatment of patient’s health.
Let’s take a look at the benefits of IoT in healthcare:
Affordability
Using IoT in medical devices and several new technologies are automating the workflow of patient care. However, IoT in healthcare is allowing the exchange of information, machine-to-machine communication, transferring data, and interoperability making the healthcare service very effective.
However, the personnel of healthcare is also having the ability to change the way of identifying ailments and illnesses in patients. Thus, helps in inventing different ways of treatment. Hence, the setup of technology reduces the cost, uses the resources of better quality, enhances the plan, and lowers down unwanted visits.
Analysis and Data Management
It is very difficult to manage and store a huge amount of data delivered by healthcare devices in a very short span. However, it is problematic for healthcare providers to gather and analyze the data manually coming from various sources and devices. Thus, IoT in medical devices will report, collect and analyze the data and eradicate the necessity of storing raw data. This will help in increasing the speed of decision-making and decrease errors.
Enhance The Experience of a Patient
Connectivity is obtained because the integration of healthcare with IoT is concentrating on the daily needs of the patient. Therefore, real-time data analysis is helping doctors to take precautionary measures in advance. There is an improvement in the different levels of treatment and incidents of false prescriptions are reduced.
Several medical devices are gathering the vitals of a patient in acute and chronic cases, making performance a top priority. If there is a presence of interruptions in the performance of the internet in medical devices can tremendously affect the safety of patient and health outcomes. Hence, it is very important to be aware of different challenges arising during the implementation of IoT in medical devices:
Data Security
IoT devices transmit and capture data in real-time, however, it is very important to keep the data secure. Various IoT devices are not having the appropriate standards and procedures for data regulation. Thus, different factors are responsible for making data available to cybercriminals and hack the system and get the PHI (Personal Health Information) of doctors and patients.
For example, the data of patients can be misused by hackers for creating fake IDs for purchasing medical equipment and drugs and can again sell them. Cybercriminals can also apply for fake Insurance claims by using the name of patients.
Cost
Cost is the main question arising while implementing IoT in medical things. IoT has made various positive changes in the healthcare industry but facilities of healthcare are not yet affordable to the common man. It is very important for making IoT in healthcare cost-effective so that it can be accessible to common as well as high-class people.
Excessive Information and Accuracy
IoT in medical devices is recording an excessive amount of data. However, this recorded data by medical devices are useful in increasing the necessary awareness amongst people. Due to the frequent connection of multiple devices, recording the enormous data and analyzing it is difficult for doctors and results in affecting the quality of doctors to make a decision.
Wrapping Up
Currently, IoT is trending a lot and has the capability to bring a positive transformation. IoT in the medical field will enhance the method of treatment, lessen the cost of healthcare facilities, monitor the patients remotely, and provide the appropriate preventive care to patients. Considering the digital transformation, IoT is playing a major role in the healthcare industry.
Ritesh Patil
Ritesh Patil is the co-founder of Mobisoft Infotech that helps startups and enterprises in mobile technology. He loves technology, especially mobile technology. He’s an avid blogger and writes on the mobile applications. He works in a leading taxi app development company with skilled Android and iOS app developers that has developed innovative mobile applications across various fields such as Finance, Insurance, Health, Entertainment, Productivity, Social Causes, Education and many more and has bagged numerous awards for the same.