Implementing IoT in Healthcare: Benefits and Prospects
The emergence of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies has led to exciting advances in the 21st century. The term IoT refers to a wide range of physical objects that connect to the Internet and can exchange data. The concept has a great impact on the modern world. It is used in almost all areas of life, but the IoT is most in demand in those industries where you need to understand customer needs, increase efficiency, and optimize operations and workflows.
The Internet of Things is almost everywhere. For example, when we use an ATM, we do not get the feeling that we have touched something “smart”. But an ATM is an element of the Internet of things. For us to perceive “smart” devices as ordinary, the Internet of Things must be very easy to use. Then the barriers will fall, as happened with the ATMs.
Modern healthcare is also hard to imagine without IoT. Internet of Medical Things is one of the fastest growing industries for the IT industry. The global market for solutions based on this technology has almost quadrupled in five years (to $158 billion in 2022).
Experts identify the following use cases for IoT:
Remote Health Monitoring
One of the most obvious and popular applications of IoT technologies in healthcare has been remote health monitoring, or telemedicine. In some cases, patients do not need to visit the emergency room or the attending physician.The work of medical workers is usually performed by various devices coupled with various applications. Doctors are using remote monitoring to get better insights into patients’ health. With the help of telemedicine, the cost of a patient’s visit to the hospital is reduced.
The use of monitoring and navigation systems in medical institutions makes the healthcare environment safer and more comfortable for both clinicians and patients. Technologies allow you to accurately track the location of any object, build routes to wards and offices, and provide convenient navigation for medical personnel.
Tracking the Location of Assets and Other Objects
Staff and management can monitor the location of equipment in real time and instantly determine its availability at the current moment. This approach improves asset management and gives the administration the necessary analytics to optimize logistics within the clinic. Thanks to the introduction of technology, it is much easier to prevent the theft or loss of assets. Medical equipment is equipped with special sensors that track its location and send notifications if it is taken out of the hospital.
Building Optimal Routes to Offices and Wards
Many medical institutions consist of a large number of offices and buildings, which makes it difficult to find the necessary premises. Difficulties with navigation increase patient dissatisfaction and waste personal time.With the introduction of technology, the following tasks can be solved:
- creating digital maps showing the location of offices;
- performing turn-by-turn navigation through the clinic;
- building routes to any point within the medical facility;
- sending personalized messages based on location.
Through the system, you can better navigate the territory of a medical institution. Patients just need to install a mobile application on their phone and easily find the right rooms.
Navigation for Staff
Ensuring safety is the main concern of any medical institution. Hospitals with multiple locations and locations, including locations around the world, find it difficult to maintain maximum security without the ability to track assets such as employees, patients, and equipment. Real-time positioning systems based on the use of Internet of Things technologies make monitoring tasks easier. With the help of positioning and navigation systems, it is possible to optimize the routes of medical personnel. The platform builds a detailed interactive map of the hospital, which displays all the key components and assets of the enterprise. When using it, you can build short routes to objects, navigate through the list of tasks, change the status of tasks for employees.
The introduction of technologies allows us to meet the high requirements for current business processes in medical institutions. Through navigation, you can improve clinic management and increase the operational efficiency of employees. An important aspect is the ability to track the workload of staff in order to optimize the schedule and set daily tasks.
Ensuring Availability of Critical Equipment
Modern hospitals are unimaginable without next-generation equipment. Some hardware is used to save or keep people alive. Like all electronic devices, this equipment is subject to numerous risks, from power outages to system failure. Such cases put the patient on the brink of life or death. The e-Alert system developed by Philips is designed to solve the problem. Instead of waiting for a device to fail, e-alert predicts possible problems, monitors medical equipment, and alerts hospital staff to possible malfunctions.
Reducing the Waiting Time
Sinai Medical Center in New York was able to reduce the waiting time for inpatient placement by an hour for 50% of patients in the emergency department. The medical center is equipped with 1.1 thousand beds, doctors see more than 59 thousand patients annually. About 90% of hospital beds are occupied by “guests”.
The facility piloted the AutoBed program developed by GE Healthcare. The goal of AutoBed is to find affordable beds for patients.The AutoBed software can process up to 80 bed requests, track availability and occupancy, and take into account 15 patient needs, such as the ability to call a nurse.
Improved Drug Management
New forms of prescription drugs are one of the most exciting advances in medicine that has come about thanks to the IoT. Tablets with the support of microscopic sensors can provide doctors with better information about the state of the patient’s internal organs. For example, the Proteus Discover solution, which uses tablets and sensors embedded in them, as well as a patch that is attached to the body, provides a more complete picture of the patient’s health. The tablets contain a sensor the size of a grain of rice. After the pill reaches the stomach, the sensor sends a signal to the patch. The patch is also equipped with sensors that record all the information received and transmit it to the patient and attending physicians.
It is also known about the development of contact lenses for diabetics. Biomedical experts hired by Apple are developing optical sensors that shine through the skin to measure sugar levels. Other manufacturers are trying to come up with a similar technology for the prevention and treatment of diabetes.
IoT for the Elderly
Social distancing measures implemented during the pandemic have made it difficult for relatives and caregivers to visit and care for older people on a regular basis. Social distancing measures have also heightened the sense of isolation among the elderly. Specially designed pendants worn by elderly patients can detect household accidents such as falls. Some remote monitoring devices can be connected to others, such as smart thermometers or blood pressure monitors. Together they give a complete picture of changes in the health status of patients. Other remote monitoring devices are designed to study the patient’s habits and movements and inform the caregiver if the patient does not show any movement or changes in movement patterns for an unusual period of time.
For example, Caregiver Smart Solutions has a Core Kit system designed for family care for the elderly, home caregivers, professional carers, nursing homes and more. This kit consists of miniature sensors placed throughout the home to monitor activity.
“Smart” sensors placed throughout the house transmit data to a specialized application. Using algorithms based on artificial intelligence and machine learning, the system quickly learns their habits and can recognize whether their sleep, food, movements, and even bathroom or toilet visits have changed.
Such devices may be configured to suit the user’s privacy preferences, such as using only audio and not video features. Another option includes smart devices that serve as reminders to ensure patients take their medications at the right time, or devices that allow users to call their loved ones using just their voice.
Various medical devices are wearable and wirelessly connected, such as heart rate and blood pressure monitors. Elderly patients especially benefit from such devices to track their health status, especially if they live far away from their families. If any changes could cause health complications, alerts are sent to the appropriate doctors and family members.
Another innovative example of IoT technology is inwardly absorbed sensors, which can even be a way to make a diagnosis. By swallowing a simple pill, doctors can now analyze the entire digestive tract. For those who have had a fibroscopic examination or colonoscopy, swallowing a pill, even a large one, is undoubtedly the preferred option.
For example, Check-Cap’s C-Scan ingestible device is designed to detect colonic polyps without prior use of a laxative. This is possible because the C-Scan capsule takes X-rays at ultra-low doses of radiation, which do not require a clean colon. The patient simply swallows the capsule along with one tablespoon of the contrast agent and fiber supplements at meals. Within two to three days, the system collects data as it moves naturally through the gastrointestinal tract.
Advantages of Introducing IoT Systems in Healthcare
The Internet of Things is changing healthcare in a variety of ways, including improving the quality of patient care, improving patient outcomes, and reducing patient care costs. Patients are better able to interact with healthcare professionals and their work efficiency is improved.
Key benefits that this technology can bring to the healthcare industry include:
Remote monitoring of patients in real time, which reduces the cost of visits to the doctor. Fewer personal visits to the doctor’s office can lead to lower medical costs and, in the current environment, a potential reduction in the risk of infections, especially for vulnerable populations with severe or chronic illnesses.
When using IoT devices, the probability of errors is much lower. Data plays an important role in ensuring effective decision making as well as the smooth functioning of the entire workflow in healthcare organizations. This helps to reduce the overall number of errors.
High quality of care is ensured as physicians make decisions based on accurate and extensive information. Therefore, full transparency of the entire process can be ensured. The availability of medical history on the IoT network makes the work of medical professionals more accurate and simple – they can always check medical data on the network instead of forcing patients to collect it individually.
Equipment and drugs are better controlled. The management of medicines and equipment in healthcare has always been a major challenge. However, by connecting IoT-class devices, medicines and equipment can be used and managed efficiently, helping to reduce costs.
Diagnosis is more accurate. The patient can be diagnosed more efficiently thanks to continuous remote monitoring. Data can be collected in real time, and this helps in diagnosing a huge number of different diseases. They are diagnosed at an early stage before the condition worsens or even before the full development of the disease.
Prospects for the Implementation of Medical IoT Solutions
The main driving factors for the development of the IoT market in the field of healthcare are: the development of IoT solutions to reduce the cost of medical care, the development of artificial intelligence technologies, the increase in investment in medical IoT solutions, the increase in the efficiency of network technologies, the growing penetration of connected devices in the healthcare sector.
The main barriers to market development are the weak implementation of IoT solutions, data privacy and security issues, as well as insufficient technical knowledge in the market as a whole. also the potential of developing countries.
IoT technologies in medicine will develop along with cloud platforms: it will be easier for users to integrate them into business processes and receive reliable data. IoT platforms will become trusted big data providers for machine learning engines. As follows from the report “IoT Market in Healthcare” by the analytical company Meticulous Research, the next few years the medical IoT segment will grow by 19% annually, by 2025 its global volume will reach $322.2 billion and $405.65 billion by 2026. By 2030, the global demand for Internet of Things (IoT) solutions will amount to more than $620 billion, an increase of almost 3.5 times over 10 years.
The fastest growing segment of the healthcare IoT market are systems and software that provide a high level of data security and visual research. The key players in the segment are Medtronic PLC (USA), Royal Philips (Netherlands), Cisco Systems (USA), IBM Corporation (USA), GE Healthcare (USA), Microsoft (USA), SAP SE (Germany), Qualcomm Life (USA) , Honeywell Life Care Solutions (USA) and Stanley Healthcare (USA).
Consumer medical devices will get smaller and cheaper every year, while collecting more and more data. In addition, vertically integrated cloud M2M solutions based on IoT and other technologies will appear. This will make it possible to obtain ready-made cloud IoT services and save on the development of special platforms, that is, it will be faster and cheaper to implement IoT systems in medicine.
IoT devices are revolutionizing the way healthcare services are delivered and monitored. In the coming years, the question will not be whether we use such connected systems and sensors, but how we will connect and protect our privacy – there are a lot of options.
Boosty Labs will also provide healthcare IoT implementation services.