How Internet of Things (IOT) influencing the healthcare?

So how do you use the Internet of Things to improve health care? In fact, the potential use of networking technology in the healthcare field is enormous. However, we can divide the most prominent healthcare applications of the digital health revolution broadly into four categories:

1. Access to information (the Internet age)
2. Inter-access (social networking)
3. Contact yourself (quantify yourself through mobile and wearable health technologies)
4. Understand everyone ( subsequent development and application of big data )

Interestingly, this is actually a five-part digital revolution, the last one not as noisy as the first four. It’s even a bit silent, but there are good reasons to believe it is critical to the future of medicine, healthcare, and health. It is to connect everything.

This connection is often referred to as the Internet of Things (IoT), which, in a practical sense, can bring together the entire digital health revolution. Simply put, the Internet of Things is connecting the physical world around us to the virtual world of the Internet. The physical world refers to household appliances, such as coffee machines or thermostats; automobiles, industrial machinery, construction, bicycles, plants, animals, medical devices, and of course the human body.

Although the concept is simple, the scope and impact of this development is complex and many other terms have been coined to describe this phenomenon. Some of these include machine-to-machine communication (M2M), pervasive computing, smart services, and industrial Internet of Things. Perhaps the truth is that no single term can fully describe what is happening, so we have created new terminology to understand it in our own context.

Putting the term aside and linking humans to all objects that may have a positive or negative impact on their health plays a huge role in improving quality of life, chronic disease management and life-saving interventions, which will really change the numbers. The ability of technology to have a large-scale impact on healthcare. First, let us look at the composition of the basic ecosystem of the Internet of Things:

Internet of Things ecosystem

The IoT ecosystem looks very complex and confusing, especially for those who are not in the technology industry. In fact, even if you are engaged in technical work, the Internet of Things has many challenges and problems in terms of interoperability. Therefore, rather than focusing on the vast ecosystem of sensors, objects, and devices, it is easier to understand the three main components of the IoT ecosystem:

Data collection:

This is basically done by equipment or hardware components, sending Data to Data is collected from various sensors before the network. In the health field, in the past, there were some basic functions, such as measuring the amount of exercise through a smartphone or wearable device. However, like heart rate, blood pressure, blood oxygen and other indicators and blood glucose and other specific disease indicators are about to enter the mainstream, the equipment will become more and more complicated.

Data Transfer:

How data is sent from a device, sensor, or object over a network. Technically, this can be done either by wire or wirelessly, but in fact, the development of wireless networks is driving the development of the Internet of Things. These wireless networks can be classified into cellular mobile, satellite and WiFi, Bluetooth, ZigBee, and RFID.

Data Analysis:

The transmission of all data collected from devices, objects, and sensors through the network collation, query, and interpretation to trigger a response or reminder to the human body. This is an important area of innovation because big data and real-time analytics are a real competitive high for those who want to develop a healthy IoT solution for healthcare, where analytics must be accurate and secure. Because this is designed for the patient.

The Internet of Things in Healthcare Applications

So how do you use the Internet of Things to improve healthcare? In fact, the potential use of networking technology in the healthcare sector is enormous. However, we can divide the most prominent healthcare applications of the Internet of Things into four broad categories:

1. Health and well-being

Health care is shifting from focusing on the disease to focusing on health and thus on disease prevention. The most prominent example is wearables that track basic activity and measure breathing patterns, skin conductance, ambient light and skin temperature with more advanced techniques. Apple’s recently launched smartwatch has pointed us to a path to a more advanced world, and in the near future, even non-invasive blood glucose measurements can be made. These measurements can be used by the application and linked to HCP and EHR / EMR (Electronic Health / Medical Records) through a support program, even through ResearchKit as part of a clinical trial.

We can track and monitor vital signs when a baby sleeps, analyze urine, check hydrate levels, and identify signs of urinary tract infections by using smart diapers; networked and gamified toothbrushes can motivate and motivate family members to maintain healthy teeth; For the elderly, intelligent surveillance systems allow older people to live independently: monitoring activities, analyzing behavior and monitoring falls, and automatically alerting caregivers and healthcare providers.

2. Patient Support

An obvious opportunity is to better support patients and their families who are treating the disease and taking medication. This opportunity seems particularly real when faced with the challenges of chronic diseases and population ageing. Some early developments, such as electronic pill dispensers, can remind you to take medicine on time and help simplify complex medication regimens, alerting patients and caregivers. This also motivates management interventions, such as electronic caps, to monitor the number of tablets or fluids remaining in the bottle and to alert patients when they need to take them. More sophisticated interventions, such as networked devices: inhalers and spirometers, electrocardiograms, blood oxygen, blood pressure equipment, etc., can improve the patient’s and caregiver’s continuous measurement, monitoring, education, and support structures to improve clinical outcomes. These can provide real-time information exchange between patients, healthcare professional services, and caregivers and families.

More advanced development includes microchip drug delivery technology. The chip can be inserted under the skin and a controlled dose of the drug administered at the appropriate time. “Bio-monitoring drugs” are also being developed, and these digital drugs will contain a tiny sensor that conveys important information about when patients take drugs and how the body reacts.

3. Improve professional medical services

Internet of Things can also support better medical services. For example, ECall (an interoperable, coordinated in-vehicle emergency call system) should appear in all new cars and trucks in the EU by October of this year. It can identify an accident in the vehicle and calculate the severity of the accident. And communicate the location and direction of the accident. This information is then passed to the Traffic Information and Emergency Services Department as appropriate. As the vehicle is integrated with other devices, we are not far from communicating personal health records through the system, which will help to make a faster, better response and save lives.

IBM introduced sensors and networking technologies to hospitals and partnered with OhioHealth to develop a system that monitors hand washing in real time to reduce medical-related infections (HAI ). This has led to 90% of people complying with handwashing agreements, a 20% increase over the previous year, and IBM is still working on a series of predictive IoT solutions.

The Artemis project, jointly developed by the University of Ontario Institute of Technology and the Toronto SickKids Hospital, allows for subtle changes in hospital-infected infants to be detected 12 to 24 hours before any external signs appear. Other ongoing projects aim to identify complications in patients with brain injury, stroke patients, and critically ill patients in intensive care units, and then perform HCP tests on them.

4. Data analysis

The Internet of Things is particularly suitable for big data in the healthcare field. The three main dimensions of data describe this very well: quantity, type, and speed. Quantity refers to the absolute size of data that can be obtained from devices, sensors, systems, and objects that can transmit data. The category illustrates the number of data sources that the platform can accept, all of which are very powerful. Speed describes the speed of transmission, which in many cases will be real-time. When we collect data on a large scale, we can use powerful computer systems (such as IBM Watson) to help build sustainable healthcare systems, collaborate to improve care and effectiveness and increase access to healthcare.

Final Thoughts

In such a short article, it is impossible to truly describe the opportunities that the Internet of Things offers in the healthcare field. For example, we have failed to cover some of the key issues in achieving the IoT vision, such as data integrity, data quality, security, and compliance. However, just as the connectivity of the global communications platform has revolutionized the way we view the world and interact with the world, the ability to connect all aspects of health and the medical field is also very exciting because this ability is Improve people’s lives as the center.

Source: “IoTian Home Network”

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