IoT and the Future of Healthcare

IoT: The Rise

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when this term become mainstream to the public, with little knowing much about it other than the fact it meant the “Internet of Things”. It seems like it should be self-explanatory, and in a way, it is. However, there is a deeper level of understanding required to recognize the cause of its evolution and the implications it encompasses.

The technical jargon: A system of connected and interconnected computing devices, objects, tech gadgets, network nodes, receivers, and countless more that all have the ability to transfer constantly and vast amounts of data throughout a network without requiring any human interface interaction.

In layman’s terms: Before a cellphone became a smartphone, the only abilities it had was sending messages and calling people (imagine that!). Then, the internet was incorporated. Now, it could show you a video, play a song, read a book, respond to your voice.

Point being, connecting devices, objects, these things to the internet opens up a world of possibilities with which we as consumers, as well as corporations, reap the benefits. Within the past decade, as the number of things capable of connecting to a network vastly exploded, and we happily enabled them so, it became assumed that we simply want to take all things that exist, and connect them to the internet.

→ Thus, the term was coined in the mid 2010’s — The Internet of Things

How & Why it Matters

Things that are classified into IoT have three important functions that connect and work together and provide their unique benefits.

1. Collect and Send Information: Through sensors that collect information from the environment to help make decisions.

2. Receive and Act on Information: Things like printers, and cars receive information and then act accordingly such printing a document or unlocking the doors.

3. Doing Both: A self-sustaining, self-regulating system such as a smart thermostat, that can collection information, send it to the appropriate channels, and without needing feedback, can receive information and act accordingly — all resulting in an efficient streamlined process.

IoT impacts everything around us everyday in our daily lives. From the way we travel, the way we shop, the way we communicate, the way we work, even in ways in which we aren’t even aware.

Connected cars have been rapidly rising as vehicle manufacturers are able to not only gather massive amounts of data via the sensors and cameras embedded in vehicles, but also leveraging the data they’ve aggregated over time regarding traffic behavior, driving patterns, city infrastructure, and constantly changing traffic regulations.

Healthcare

Perhaps more than any other field, IoT’s potential in the healthcare field is unlike any other. The benefits derived from being able to collect critical healthcare data from sensors of almost endless variety is astonishing. To name a few, there’s personalized telemedicine, disease prevention and monitoring, health monitoring via blood pressure and diabetes, and neurosensors.

Aside from wearables, which are the most popular form of health “monitoring” devices, other devices that can monitor hospital assets can save hundreds of lives by constantly sending real-time data on essential hospital equipment. These devices are starting to enter in the healthcare field in massive numbers on both the doctors’ side as well as the patients’. Devices like ultrasounds, thermometers, glucose monitors, ECG’s, are all increasingly becoming connected and in constant communication with each other.

Real-time supervision from patients wearing heart monitors can immediately transmit that data to healthcare professionals who can immediately analyze it and save lives.

This gives rise to a new subcategory of IoT: IoMT — Internet of Medical Things. These encompass an array of internet-capable medical devices that are in constant communication with each other anonymously and are stored in protected environments like the cloud: AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, etc.

Currently, according to Gartner, “the IoT in healthcare is forecast to grow by 29% in 2020”.

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