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Internet of Things (IoT)

The 10 Ways Internet of Things (IoT) Contributes to Healthcare

One of the rapidly evolving areas of the IoT industry is healthcare devices. It is expected that this industry, commonly referred to as the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT), will be worth $176 billion by 2026.

We must first comprehend the many applications of IoT devices for healthcare to understand what IoMT implies for IoT in its entirety and how healthcare IoT devices must be monitored and controlled. There are several instances of IoT in the healthcare sector. However, remote patient monitoring—or IoT devices that gather patient data like heart rate and body temperature—are the most well-known.

 

IoT devices provide novel options for patients to self-monitor and for healthcare professionals to monitor patients. As a result, healthcare practitioners and their patients can profit from and face obstacles from the range of wearable IoT devices.

Here are some ways that IoT is revolutionizing healthcare, as well as the effects that it is having on IoT security:

 

  1. Online patient surveillance

The most prevalent use of IoT devices in healthcare is remote patient monitoring. IoT devices may automatically gather health data from patients not physically present in a healthcare institution, dismissing the need for patients to travel to the providers or collect it themselves. These metrics include heart rate, blood pressure, temperature, and more.

When an IoT device gathers patient data, it sends the information to a software program so that patients and healthcare providers may examine it. To make treatment recommendations or produce warnings, algorithms may be employed to evaluate the data. For instance, an IoT sensor that notices a patient’s alarmingly low heart rate can send out an alarm so medical personnel can take action.

 

Making sure the extremely sensitive data that these IoT devices acquire is safe and private is a significant barrier for remote patient monitoring equipment.

  1. Checking blood sugar

Historically, it has been challenging for more than 30 million Americans with diabetes to check their blood sugar levels. Not only is it cumbersome to manually scan a patient’s blood glucose levels and record the findings, but doing so only reports the patient’s blood glucose levels at the precise moment the test is given. Periodic testing might not be sufficient to find an issue if levels vary greatly.

IoT gadgets can assist in overcoming these difficulties by continuously and automatically monitoring patients’ blood glucose levels. In addition to diminishing the need for manual record-keeping, glucose monitoring devices can warn patients when their blood sugar levels are problematic.

 

Developing an IoT glucose monitoring device that is small enough to monitor constantly without disturbing patients and does not consume too much energy to require frequent charging presents challenges.

 

However, these are not significant barriers, and products that address them guarantee to alter how patients control their blood sugar levels.

  1. Monitoring of heart rate

Even for physically present individuals at medical institutions, measuring heart rates might be complicated, similar to how it is with glucose. Periodic heart rate checks are ineffective in preventing sudden heart rate changes. The traditional continuous cardiac monitoring systems used in hospitals require patients to be permanently hooked to the equipment, which limits their movement.

 

Heart rate monitoring is now possible using several tiny IoT devices, allowing patients to roam freely while continually monitoring their hearts. Although it’s still challenging to guarantee exact readings, most modern equipment can provide accuracy rates of 90% or more.

  1. Hand hygiene observation

Historically, there hasn’t yet been an effective way to reduce the danger of transmitting infection and ensure that staff members and patients within a healthcare institution clean their hands appropriately.

Today, hospitals and other healthcare facilities widely use IoT devices to remind patients to wash their hands before entering rooms. The devices might suggest the best ways to sterilize to reduce a specific danger for a particular patient.

 

These tools can remind individuals to wash their hands, and evidence indicates that these gadgets can lower hospital infection rates by more than 60%.

  1. Monitoring depression and overall mood

Another data that has historically been challenging to gather consistently is information regarding the signs and symptoms of depression and patients’ overall mood. Healthcare professionals may occasionally inquire about their patient’s well-being, but they cannot foresee abrupt mood changes. Furthermore, patients frequently don’t adequately describe their feelings.

 

IoT devices that are “Mood-aware” can help with these issues. Machines can infer details about a patient’s mental state by gathering and analyzing data like heart rate and blood pressure. Sophisticated IoT devices for mood monitoring may even track the patient’s eye movements.

  1. Monitoring Parkinson’s disease

Healthcare professionals must be able to judge how Parkinson’s patients’ symptom intensity changes throughout the day to treat them most successfully.

 

By continually gathering information regarding Parkinson’s symptoms, IoT devices promise to make this task much more straightforward. In addition, patients no longer need to spend a lot of time in a hospital for observation because of the gadgets, which allow them to live their lives as usual in their homes.

 

Additional IoT/IoMT instances

Although wearable devices like the ones mentioned above are still the most popular IoT device type in healthcare, other gadgets go beyond monitoring and provide therapy or even “live” in or on the patient.

  1. Connected inhalers

Attacks caused by ailments like asthma or COPD can occur unexpectedly and without notice. IoT-connected inhalers can benefit patients by tracking the frequency of attacks and gathering environmental data to assist medical professionals in determining what precipitated an attack.

 

Additionally, linked inhalers can warn patients when they misuse their inhalers or leave them at home, which puts them in danger of having an attack without their inhaler.

  1. Ingestible sensors

Gathering data from within the human body is usually untidy and quite disruptive. For instance, no one likes having a camera or probe inserted into their digestive system.

 

When using ingestible sensors, getting data from the digestive and other systems is substantially less intrusive. For example, they reveal information about stomach PH levels or assist in determining the cause of gastrointestinal bleeding.

 

These gadgets need to be tiny enough to be readily ingested. Additionally, they must be able to disintegrate or neatly exit the body on their own. Many businesses are working diligently on ingestible sensors that suit these requirements.

  1. Connected contact lenses

Another potential for passive, unobtrusive healthcare data collection is offered by smart contact lenses. Intriguingly, businesses like Google have patented linked contact lenses because they might also feature tiny cameras that let users shoot images with their eyes.

 

Smart glasses hold the potential to transform human eyes into a potent instrument for digital interactions, whether they’re employed to improve health outcomes or for other reasons.

  1. Robotic surgery

Surgeons may carry out intricate surgeries that would be challenging to do with human hands by inserting tiny Internet-connected robots into the human body. The size of the incisions needed for robotic operations conducted by small IoT devices can also be reduced, making the procedure less invasive and promoting faster patient recovery.

 

These tools must be compact and dependable enough to carry out operations with little interference. To decide how to continue during surgery, they must also be able to decipher complicated circumstances inside of bodies. However, the use of IoT robots in surgery demonstrates that these difficulties may be successfully overcome.

The importance of security for IoT in healthcare

IoT for healthcare must overcome significant security concerns to be effective. Above all, IoT device administrators, developers, and healthcare providers must ensure that data acquired by IoT devices is sufficiently secured. Under HIPAA and other comparable laws, a large portion of the information gathered by medical devices qualifies as protected health information. As a result, if IoT devices are not adequately protected, they might be utilized as gateways for stealing critical data. Eighty-two percent of healthcare firms claim to have been the target of attacks on their IoT equipment.

One method for tackling this issue is by creating secure IoT hardware and software. However, the management of IoT devices in healthcare is equally crucial to prevent data from unmonitored devices from getting into the wrong hands. For instance, if patient monitoring equipment is not decommissioned correctly once it is no longer required or has outdated software or firmware, an attacker may be able to access the network and steal protected health information.

 

To reduce this risk, all IoT devices on a healthcare provider’s network should be appropriately discovered and classified. Managers may monitor device activity to spot abnormalities, conduct risk analyses, and isolate vulnerable from mission-critical devices after IoT device networks have been appropriately identified, categorized, regulated, and protected.

The networked healthcare of the future

IoT technology has helped healthcare, bringing ground-breaking breakthroughs like automated insulin administration, linked inhalers and contact lenses, Parkinson’s disease monitoring, glucose monitoring, depression and mood monitoring, and more.

 

The IoMT has simplified processes, and patient satisfaction has increased. Patients gain convenience, increased participation, and reduced in-person doctor visits. More accurate data, diagnoses, and time management have all benefited providers.

 

In the future, IoT in healthcare will undoubtedly lead to even more advances that will further streamline the medical industry for both practitioners and patients.