How Is IoT Implemented In Healthcare Sector

Adopting any new technology in healthcare has proven slow due to data protection, compliance, and lengthy processes involved in testing new healthcare services. This ensures patient safety is uncompromised. Although the adoption of IoT in healthcare was initially slow, its benefits now far outweigh the concerns. Remote patient monitoring through the Internet of Things and faster diagnosis through real-time data collection are critical enablers of intelligent healthcare.

Before the pandemic, IoT implementation in healthcare was limited to tracking medical devices using RFID. Poor Wi-Fi coverage and strong security firewalls were other reasons why intelligent devices did not have a chance to create value in hospitals. While individuals use smart machines to monitor health indicators such as heart rate, temperature, and blood sugar, this data has not been integrated into healthcare provider systems to correlate and diagnose health problems.

COVID-19 has accelerated the adoption of IoT (or IOMT (Internet of Medical Things)) with AI, telehealth, and 5G in healthcare due to several factors. Those are:

• Social distancing to protect both patients and caregivers.
• Maintaining hygiene, personal protective equipment, and a clean environment.
• It is necessary to regulate patient transport to minimize risks.

Although telehealth services existed before COVID-19, adoption was weak. Today, many patients choose a video or telephone appointment via phone, tablet, or computer for general or specialized treatment.

Things What IoT does for healthcare?

1. Hospital Care

Simplifying Processes: IoT and an excellent patient portal can reduce inefficiencies throughout a hospital’s patient care cycle. You can register through the patient portal with a trigger given by the doctor who announces the surgery or treatment for the appointment. Hospital management can then assign a ward based on patient input. The patient’s monitoring device continuously monitors the patient and helps nurses and doctors when they arrive. The hospital can more efficiently produce the final output based on data from IoT devices, such as drug consumption, population statistics, and generated test reports. Overall, patient data can help hospitals gather information about departments that require more resources, drug sales and procurement, and bottlenecks that need to be addressed.

Patient and staff monitoring with intelligent devices: With smart devices, nurses can monitor all patients in the hospital using a standard dashboard and alarm mechanisms. Today, intelligent machines are attached to the patient’s bed that monitor the patient’s vital statistics, oxygen levels, and movement. Doctors and nurses can be tracked and reached in emergencies. You can be reminded about disinfection and using the appropriate equipment when entering the operating room.

Environmental monitoring: Wi-Fi sensors can monitor the quality and preservation of medicines and vaccines. During failures or maintenance, Wi-Fi sensors can monitor IoT-integrated medical assets with alerts.

2. First Aid

IoT combined with video/telehealth services and AR can help when a doctor is absent, or a remote specialist needs to be brought into the emergency room. Even in the emergency room, you can get the proper treatment at the right time if you teach the nurse to use these techniques. In some countries, drones are used to deliver life-saving medicines, blood, and organs to remote or disaster areas.

3. Home Care

IoT-integrated wearable and home trackers help caregivers deliver better care with faster response times and lower costs. In the case of chronic diseases, intelligent devices can monitor the patient’s health and warn of a medical emergency. Video and telephone conferencing reduce personal physician visits. This is

especially useful for people who live in remote areas, are disabled, or do not lead an active life due to old age. Such a hybrid treatment allows for post-hospital patient follow-up and data to improve treatment in healthcare.

Healthcare IoT Use Cases – Successful Connected Healthcare Applications

Here are five examples of successful IoT healthcare applications –

1. Combination inhalers

Inhalers are used to handle chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), i.e., chronic inflammatory lung diseases such as asthma. There are two main types –

• Chronic bronchitis – causes prolonged coughing and mucus
• Emphysema – causes lung damage

IoT

People with COPD often have unpredictable attacks. Inhalers deliver the necessary medicine directly to the lungs, but their effectiveness depends on how much mixture reaches the lungs. A short delay between inhalation and drug administration can reduce the amount of the drug absorbed. COPD patients also need to be disciplined in taking care of their health.

IoT-connected inhalers can thus help by monitoring the frequency of attacks, collecting environmental data such as air quality to understand what triggered an attack, and tracking actual drug consumption. This Bluetooth connection to mobile devices and similar applications can give doctors the data points to understand a patient’s disease level, adjust the dosage, or use alternative treatments.

Additionally, these smart inhalers can alert patients to take them with them when they leave home or even find them at home.

The ProAir Digihaler is an IoT-integrated inhaler developed by Jerusalem-based Teva Pharmaceuticals. Age groups of 4-year-olds and above can use this inhaler. A prescription is mandatory to purchase it. It can connect to a mobile app to record the amount of inhalation data and its timestamp. It can guide the patient to use the device regularly and correctly.

2. Personal Health Monitoring

Wi-Fi-enabled mobile devices that monitor the user’s vital signs, activity, and general environment were on the market long before hospitals opened the doors to the Internet of Things. Many wearable devices, such as smart watches, pedometers, smart bracelets, and other jewelry, monitor heart rate, body temperature, sleep patterns, steps taken, or distance traveled daily. This includes pandemic-related parameters such as oxygen levels and hand sanitizer alarm mechanisms. Linking this information to a healthcare provider allows for proactive treatment and can monitor patient deterioration.

Apple Watch Series 6 improves on the previous series by providing the user with more accurate oxygen saturation levels. This and pulse measurement provide information about early signs of respiratory disease. Apple is also working with the University of California, Irvine, and Anthem to study how longitudinal measurements of blood oxygen and other physiological signals can help manage and manage asthma.

3. Home Monitoring of Chronic Diseases

Several networked IoT devices can be used to manage medications, symptoms, and vital signs at home. Information from the devices is transmitted to a platform in the cloud that monitors and sends alerts to caregivers and family members based on the condition.

The platform also monitors the effectiveness of administered drugs to make necessary dosage changes.

Quio is one cloud platform for chronic disease management, enabling better patient care, fewer patient visits, and even fewer emergency room visits. It also provides a platform for patients to enroll in a study anonymously.

Pfizer and IBM recently developed a “Parkinson’s House” with ubiquitous sensors that help detect even the most minor changes in a patient’s movements. The collected data is uploaded to the cloud platform. Researchers use these data to analyze patient progress and response to treatment.

4. Active Control

According to GE Healthcare, only 38% of hospital inventory is used. Most of it is lost, stolen, or cannot be found when needed. In addition to lack of visibility, poor healthcare equipment maintenance is a massive cost to hospitals.

IoT devices integrated into healthcare facilities help to monitor the devices continuously. This facilitates quick response time in an emergency. Therefore, the quality and maintenance of the equipment are streamlined with regularly collected data.

NexLeaf Technologies is one company that aims to improve healthcare in less developed countries. One of its products, ColdTrace, offers remote monitoring of vaccine refrigerators so caregivers can use vaccines and medications safely and judiciously.

5. Insurance Incentive

Insurance companies are adopting IoT wearables such as fitness bands and phone apps to incentivize their customers and lower their health insurance premiums. This is beneficial not only for their customers but also for the insurance business. Manulife Insurance’s Boston unit, John Hancock, offers a 25% discount on health insurance to anyone who wants to use an app and other devices to track their health. The John Hancock Vitality Program is affiliated with Vitality, which distributes free tools that allow you to monitor and advise on individual health. It also offers Vitality Aspire, with Onduo’s diabetes management technology, for patients with type 1 and type 2 diabetes.

Ensuring Successful Deployment of IoT Solutions in Healthcare

The IoT architecture includes –

1. Sensors, actuators, and other data devices that collect data. In healthcare, these could be IoT devices labeled as health devices, such as wheelchairs, or devices that measure patients’ vital devices, such as temperature sensors, smart watches, ECG monitoring, etc.

2. Data from sensors and actuators are digitized, as some could be analog devices. A desktop computer, tablet, or mobile phone can be used to perform these.
3. Digitized data is pushed to the cloud, processed, standardized, and stored for analysis.
4. Data analysis for effective decision-making. In this case, it would be about reaching the correct diagnosis, improving or changing the treatment, and monitoring the patient’s medication. For healthcare equipment, this would provide insight into actual usage, maintenance costs, etc., allowing processes to be streamlined. Artificial intelligence can mine data faster for diagnostics or remedies.
5. Edge Cloud is a cure-all versus use-case-specific solution. What applications require Edge Cloud capabilities (perhaps those in manufacturing RPA and healthcare versus retail applications) is unclear. The business cases are still being evaluated, and the cost of models will play out over time.

IoT Solutions

Successful implementation of a HIOT (Healthcare IoT) architecture would require a good WLAN network to enable connectivity between devices. It needs a robust IT infrastructure to ensure high data security across various connected devices and platforms. Whether to use cloud-based, hybrid, or on-premise IT infrastructure would depend on the existing systems in the environment. that are critical to the integration, HIPAA guidelines, and other compliance practices. This architecture must include a support platform for the maintenance of intelligent devices because the reliability of the IoT Healthcare system depends on their operation.

Fog architecture

As Fog architecture becomes more common, data processing takes place on the node where the data is collected. For example, a heart rate monitor measures your current heart rate, can track fluctuations, and report critical changes or levels. Since the data is processed/pre-processed at the collection point, the output data can be standardized and digitized. This allows the existing network infrastructure to be used for communication.

Hartford HealthCare, a comprehensive and integrated healthcare system serving more than 17,000 people daily across its 400 locations, recently announced its decision to launch a novel research initiative with Ibex Medical Analytics.

This initiative is a natural progression in Hartford HealthCare’s ongoing digital transformation. The AI assistant could provide a greater safety net with minimal effort when pathologist staffing and recruitment are becoming more challenging due to the fast-increasing number of cancer cases. The initiative underlines the growing importance of intelligent analytics in improving diagnostics and patient care.

Industry 4.0 and IoT

At its heart, IoT encompasses the collection and analysis of data, insights, and automation of processes involving machines, people, things, and places. IoT is, therefore, a combination of sensors, actuators, connectivity, cloud and edge computing and storage, AI and ML intelligence, and security.

Industry 4.0, also known as the fourth industrial revolution, relies heavily on IoT technology, redefining automotive, transport, healthcare, public mobility, retail, and commerce. Since AI and ML drive all innovations in both 5G and IoT, their coming together is seen as a natural phenomenon.

AI, and machine learning are helping healthcare organizations manage vast amounts of data and optimize routine tasks. It is believed that robotic process automation can help the healthcare sector curtail costs by 50%. But to use these technologies efficiently, it is crucial to understand their impact on healthcare and the myriad benefits they offer.

Conclusion:

When your organization buys an interim HIOT solution, it requires integration with existing systems, data standardization, network upgrades, cloud infrastructure selection, and overall IT security. We can help you achieve your HIOT performance goals.

While everyone agrees on the importance of good health care, medication errors alone cost about US$ 42 billion each year. 4 out of 10 patients suffer during primary and ambulatory healthcare, and often, these errors are related to diagnosis, prescription, and use of medicines. Healthcare experts believe patient engagement is the key to safer healthcare and can reduce the harm and the subsequent cost by up to 15% annually.

The growing concerns in the healthcare industry have put the spotlight on intelligent analytics to help clinicians and caregivers improve patient outcomes.