Internet of Things (IoT) Healthcare Benefits

Healthcare Industry across the world are transforming themselves into coordinated, user-centric, and more efficient systems. This digital transformation implies advance integration, ubiquitous and interoperable healthcare services. Centralized access to health-records and patient-related information to engage patients in their healthcare efficiently.

With this objective, the ICT will play a critical role in the enhancement of distributed healthcare systems and achieve efficiencies that will fulfil various and frequent update demands. Internet of Things (IoT) has poised to disrupt the Healthcare Industry through intelligently connected-devices, systems, and things that are used by billions of people from all walks of life, to leverage data and help them make more timely, specific, and contextualized decisions.

The IoT marks the evolution of technology in the Healthcare sector that is enabling a new wave of game-changing and life-enhancing services across the economy. The IoT has significant potentials to bring economic and social benefits to the citizens, end-users, governments, and businesses through advanced and improved service delivery and personalization. The creation of new jobs, and efficient use of scarce resources. IoT enables the healthcare industry to become connected to such an extent that has never been possible before.

Despite the advancements, IoT in the Healthcare industry has paved the way for many opportunities to leverage from and challenges to be addressed. According to market forecast, The IoT Healthcare Market is worth $158.07 billion with 50 billion connected devices by 2020. The long-predicted IoT evolution in healthcare offers the ability to respond with speed, act at a scale that affects the entire community or city or a nation. Advanced model for prevention and wellness, and able to monitor and support an individual free from “Physical Constraints.” entirely changes the way how doctors deal with patients.

1. Remote Patient Monitoring and Telehealth: The advent of Telemedicine allows treating patients using telecommunications reducing costs substantially and minimizing in-facility congestion. Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) also called homecare telehealth with Smart Phone or Smart body sensor allows a patient to perform a routine test and send the real-time test data to the healthcare professional. With the growing problem of chronic diseases be it in rural or urban areas the telemedicine and RPM technology enables remote patient health care access, empowers timely action.

Remote monitoring technique is a whole new approach to diagnosis and facilitates management & monitoring of patients conditions effectively. The RPM is used with the chronically ill and elderly with high medical care which allows the physicians to closely monitor the patient’s medical conditions and intervene if need be facilitating immediate treatment without losing time. “According to the National Broadband Plan drafted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the use of RPM technology in conjunction with electronic health records (EHR) could save the healthcare industry $700 billion over 15 to 20 years.”

2. Healthcare Information or Electronic Healthcare Records (EHR) Systems: The evolution of IoT has propelled the adoption of centralization of healthcare records to be made available from various monitoring systems and medical devices in the EHR systems which are connected to send the data to doctors, labs, nurses, general physicians (GP), and others associated entities with the patient.

However, the EHR system is being slowly adopted by everyone in the healthcare industry. The hospitals, labs, GPs, and others maintain independent EHR system which is not integrated today. The existing EHR systems are not designed with IoT and real-time data in mind. They have been designed from the patient-centric, affordability, and from the perspective of the healthcare professionals and hospital process, based on static data.

This traditional method of maintaining the patient’s healthcare record is a significant limitation as not all the healthcare data from the connected devices lands in the EHR systems. However, there is a shift towards real-time health system for including real-time data capabilities from the connected/wearable devices and in an IoT perspective. “According to research by Mind Commerce, the Real-Time Health Systems (RTHS) will become a critical area for IoT in healthcare as Data Analytics will be used to evaluate both static and dynamic data for Predictive Analytics for providing a comprehensive or advanced healthcare systems. I strongly believe that the Ministry of Healthcare globally should mandate in centralizing the EHR systems.

3. Robotics and Healthcare Automation: Karl Capek first used the word ‘robot’ in his play “R.U.R.” (which stands for Rossum’s Universal Robots) that debuted in 1921. Capek derived the word from the Czech word robota and used to reference mechanical humanoids built to perform menial and repetitive tasks which are the type of jobs the robots surpass the humans. Medical Robots don’t exist only in Sci-fi movies but have already penetrated the world of healthcare. Right from Simplifying Surgery, Hospital Helper, Elderly Care, Paraplegic Possibilities, Aiding Autism, Robotic Medical Assistant Monitoring patient vital statistics, and many such assistants are disrupting the world of healthcare systems. By 2020, the surgical robots will enable the surgeon to perform surgery with precision, control, and enhanced vision. The Surgical System Da Vinci does this precisely with its robotic system featuring a magnified 3D HD vision system. The robotic surgical industry is expected to boom with a sales forecast to double by approx. $6.4 billion by 2022

Similarly, the Robot TUG is built to carry more than 400kgs in the form of laboratory specimens, medications, and other sensitive materials. The TUG after completing its mission returns to the charging dock for recharging until it is loaded for its next task. The most significant advantage these robots have over a human is, they work round-the-clock reducing the burden of employees working in night-shifts and used for heavy duty physical labour and enabling right channel of the resources. Likewise, there is Robot for Interactive Physical Assistance which is used at homes for patient care for both moving and lifting patient in and out of bed into a wheelchair or helps the patient to sit, stand, and turn them in the bed for preventing bed sores and other medical complications. Hence the Medical Robots are revolutionizing the medical world and playing a critical role in disrupting the way we viewed healthcare a few years back and from what it is today and how it will be tomorrow.

4. Internet of Things Powers the Preventive Healthcare: Healthcare’s transition to embracing IoT technologies for Preventive Healthcare will have significant impact transforming the way in which appropriate treatments are provided for unforeseen chronic diseases and medical conditions using the predictive analytics capability of IoT for preventive care. In the modern era of the accelerated ageing population, there is a growing interest and need for the healthcare industry to offer a personalized, collaborative and preventive form of care.

The Ministry of Healthcare in Singapore aims at ensuring that the elderly and patients with chronic medical conditions are remotely monitored through Smart Connected or Wearable devices which helps in predicting any unusual medical condition or behaviour pattern in the patient’s vital information. The device immediately sends the real-time data of the patient to the cloud-based services which in turn alerts the patient’s nurse or doctor for their proactive action. The Preventive healthcare using IoT is being slowly adopted and is still far from becoming a reality in the near future.

5. Hospital Information Management System (HIMS): The digital transformation has disrupted the traditional processes and systems of managing the functioning of the hospitals. The IoT has revolutionized the fast-paced world of medicine. It is a daunting task to maintain and operate a multi-speciality Hospital and Nursing homes. The HIMS system will enable the entire functioning paperless. The system integrates all the information about the doctors, staff, patients, administrative details, etc. The significant benefits of IoT for HIMS are Decreased operational costs, Improved or Quality outcomes of the treatment through virtual infrastructures and accessibility of real-time information for making informed decisions, Improved disease management through RPM, Reduced Errors, Enhanced management of drugs, and Enhanced Patient Experience. Thus enabling the Hospitals to become efficient and address the demands of the ever-growing population in this world with various chronic medical conditions.

To Summarize the burgeoning of IoT in the Healthcare Industry has made a paradigm shift and is completely changing the face of the traditional healthcare world. However, the Industry stakeholders need to collaborate to make the vision of IoT in Healthcare into a reality which will transform the face of the medical world for the good of humankind.